8.1Rue d'Aguesseau, ParisSince 2019
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The first rule of keeping a secret is not to call your bar The Confidential. Les Jardins du Faubourg has broken it. The hotel stands on rue d'Aguesseau, a short street near the Élysée Palace, where it is easy to imagine that everyone knows more than they are saying. Its name promises gardens and its bar promises discretion, and from the pavement you can see neither. As cover stories go, it is a good one.
At number nine, a Haussmann building stands with the expression of a man who has never revealed his profession. Behind the door is a stone staircase, respectable enough to make you wonder whether you have the right address. What the house is hiding is not another salon but a courtyard garden. Across it stands a younger building, its mirrored façade caught in the climbing jasmine. The two look at one another over the greenery like agents who have agreed not to ask questions.
The thirty-six rooms are divided between them, so even going upstairs involves a small choice of allegiance. In the old house, high ceilings and the manners of a Paris apartment; across the garden, a more contemporary idea of retreat. One suite in the newer wing even has a garden of its own, a safe house within the safe house. The hotel could have made its two halves compete. Instead, the courtyard gives them something to agree on: the city has been turned down without being switched off.
There is, however, a serious flaw in the security arrangements. Il Giardino sets its tables beside the garden for people who have come in from the street, and The Confidential is a hotel bar, not a club with an initiation ceremony. A place that appears to exist for hiding has arranged, quite sensibly, to be found. The courtyard may be less confidential than the bar, and better for it.
The house keeps one more surprise below ground. Beneath a stone vault, a fifteen-metre pool runs between columns, an improbably grand room for a hotel that makes so little of itself from the street. It is difficult to maintain an air of secrecy when you keep building places that deserve to be discovered.
Privacy here is not the business of shutting Paris out. It is the pleasure of choosing which part of Paris to let in. Just along the faubourg, the Élysée has every reason to take secrets seriously. This hotel can afford to treat them as an invitation. Tell no one, if you like. But do bring someone to dinner.
In the courtyard
A Japanese loquat tree shades the restaurant tables.
The carriage door on rue d'Aguesseau and the stone staircase behind it serve far more than an entrance: the front house holds 24 of the rooms and 3 of the four suites, so for most guests this is the way home each night. It is the part of the hotel that most resembles a private Paris building, and it gives nothing away about the garden. The courtyard only appears once the hall has been crossed, which is the point of the arrangement.
The mirror on the rear building is not glass but aluminium cladding, and the climbing jasmine was set against it to do what age does for the stone house opposite. The reflection doubles the courtyard for anyone sitting in it; from the eight rooms behind it, the garden is the whole view. The only private garden belongs to the Villa Faubourg suite at the foot of this wing; the courtyard in front of it is shared.
The courtyard between the buildings was laid out by the landscape designer Xavier de Chirac as a dining garden, and Il Giardino uses all of it. A Japanese loquat tree shades the tables, bamboo screens the walls, and a glass-roofed dining room on one side keeps the garden in view when the terrace is too cold. The result is a restaurant that is mostly landscape: the tables change with the seasons, the planting stays.
The pool runs fifteen metres beneath a stone vault on the lower floor, lined in mosaic. The hammam and the sauna are glazed and face the water, so even the heat rooms are part of the view down the length of the room. For a house of 36 rooms, it is a generous use of the basement: almost the whole spa is arranged around this one long space rather than around treatment cabins.
At a glance
Where
9 rue d'Aguesseau, 8th arrondissement, a short street between rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and the Madeleine, close to the Élysée, Concorde and the Champs-Élysées
Why this one
Jasmine, bamboo and a loquat tree, steps from the Élysée.
Fifteen metres beneath a vault, below a 36-room house.
A Haussmann house or a modern building facing the garden.
The Edit Notes
Three-quarters of the hotel lives in the front house: 24 rooms and 3 suites, the building that faces rue d'Aguesseau. The modern wing holds only eight rooms and the Villa Faubourg suite, and every one of them looks onto the courtyard. That makes the newer building the scarcer and, for a hotel named after its gardens, the more logical choice. The Haussmann rooms offer the ceilings; the rear rooms offer the reason for coming.
The restaurant opened in 2019 as Le Faubourg, became La Régalade du Faubourg under Bruno Doucet, and is now Il Giardino, cooked by the Neapolitan chef Davide Pecorella. Three concepts in a few years can look like indecision. Here it matters less, because the courtyard, not the menu, defines the place. The kitchen is the variable; the loquat tree and the glass roof are the constants. Judge the restaurant as a setting first.
The split between Parisian and Contemporary rooms looks like a choice between two hotels, but the building architect Vincent Bastie and the architect-decorator Arnaud Behzadi worked on both houses, and the same solid wood, marble and brass run through each. The difference is ceiling height and outlook, not quality or temperament. Anyone torn between the two should choose by the window rather than by the label on the booking page.
The spa covers roughly 400 m² on the lower floor, yet it has only two treatment rooms, one of them for couples. The space is given over to the water, the hammam, the sauna and two lounges rather than to a long treatment list. That is the right priority for a 36-room house. Treat the spa as a place to swim and sit in the warmth; it is not built for a full day of rituals.
The price question
Les Jardins du Faubourg charges for an address a few steps from the Élysée and for a planted courtyard hidden behind a street front in the 8th. What the money buys is quiet at the centre of the city, a vaulted pool and a restaurant with a garden attached. What it does not buy is a grand public life, large rooms as standard or a full-scale spa. Book the modern wing for the courtyard and the price makes sense.
Book it for a discreet stay in the 8th, ideally in the modern wing facing the courtyard, with dinner in the garden. Look elsewhere for a large house with grand public rooms or a long spa menu.
Le Bristol Paris
Further along the faubourg at number 112: a much larger house with a courtyard garden and a pool at the top of the building.
Le Pavillon de la Reine
On the place des Vosges in the Marais: a smaller house surrounded by gardens, with a spa of its own.
The Extra Edit
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How the grade is made
The Edit score is the editor's grade for the level of the hotel, out of ten. It weighs what the outside judges say (Michelin Keys, Forbes Travel Guide, World's 50 Best Hotels, Atout France palace status, La Liste), what changed in the last two years and what guests write now; where these and the editor's own judgement disagree, the editor decides. A spa with a pool worth booking for adds up to two tenths.
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