Les Bains

At Les Bains Douches in 1979, losing at draughts took a little longer than usual. The board lay at the bottom of the old bathhouse swimming pool, and a man in diving gear moved the enormous pieces as players called out their instructions. Above the water, Paris drank and danced. It was a perfectly ridiculous arrangement, which is probably why people still remember it. The building at 7 rue du Bourg-l'Abbé has since acquired thirty-nine bedrooms. The pool is back too, although nobody now needs a wetsuit to finish a game.

There have been three versions of Les Bains, and they share a suspicion that going home early is a waste of a good address. In 1885, the Guerbois family opened baths with steam rooms and showers; the porters from nearby Les Halles, having worked through the night, came to wash and drink coffee with calvados before heading home. In 1978, the baths became a club and Philippe Starck gave the dance floor its black-and-white geometry. Joy Division played here in December 1979, a performance that later appeared on record. Andy Warhol, Karl Lagerfeld and a considerable amount of Paris nightlife followed. When Jean-Pierre Marois reopened the place as a hotel in 2015, he kept the club beneath it. At last, the night had somewhere to sleep.

The bedrooms make no attempt to hide the family history. Tristan Auer has used marble, dark wood, velvet and a few unmistakable winks to former regulars: Gainsbourg-like carpeting, sofas that recall Warhol, contemporary art from artists who have worked in residence. The style is more dressed for an evening out than for a quiet country weekend, though a good bed and heavy fabrics are welcome when the evening runs late. The entry-level Classic is twenty-three square metres; a Deluxe offers thirty-three. Some rooms have balconies, but they are not guaranteed. At the extravagant end, the eighty-square-metre Suite Les Bains has a private hammam and a south-facing terrace. There are worse places to discover that you have missed breakfast.

Then again, breakfast is only one of several meals worth getting out of bed for. Roxo, the burgundy-lacquered bar and restaurant, opens in the morning and keeps going until midnight, with cocktails, sharing plates and two planted patios. Some evenings it is quite relaxed; on others, particularly towards the weekend, the music gets louder. The club below still holds DJ nights and performances, and hotel residents have access when it is operating. It would be foolish to assume that every Tuesday is a Saturday, or that a room key guarantees the same party on any date. Look at the programme before booking.

Another floor takes you back to the property's original line of business. The reconstructed pool has a counter-current jet, waterfalls and bubbles; it is made for a restorative dip rather than swimming laps. There is a hammam, and spa treatments draw on the Les Bains Guerbois fragrances. The best part is how little ceremony surrounds all this. You can have a massage in the afternoon, go out for dinner and find yourself back in the very building you had supposedly been recovering from.

This remains an expensive address on an unremarkable little street, closer to the bustle of boulevard de Sébastopol than to the postcard Marais. Anyone requiring guaranteed early nights should ask about club dates and room position, or stay somewhere whose basement has less ambition. But as a way of spending a Paris weekend without dividing it neatly into days and nights, Les Bains is hard to improve upon.

On Sunday mornings, the dance floor becomes a hip-hop yoga studio. Somebody unrolls a mat and tells everyone to breathe. After a century and a half of serving Paris by night, the building has finally discovered what to do the morning after.