Maison Delano

Augustin Blondel de Gagny had one of the more delightful job titles at the court of Louis XV: intendant of the King's Little Pleasures. He helped organise the spectacles, ceremonies and festivities that made royal life such an expensive occupation. In the 1730s, nearly twenty years before taking that post, he had rebuilt his Paris house on rue d'Anjou. It is now Maison Delano, an address with a rather different idea of how to enjoy oneself.

The name promises more noise than you actually get. Delano became famous in Miami Beach in the 1990s, when billowing white curtains, beautiful people and a lobby with a social life of its own helped make hotels fashionable places to spend an evening. Paris opened in 2023, a few steps from the boutiques of Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and found itself in a street of embassies and discreet doorways. Instead of trying to recreate South Beach, it has settled into the much more Parisian business of being a lovely house to come home to.

There are reminders of its earlier life wherever the decorators have let them speak. Marble fireplaces, parquet floors and painted ceilings survive behind Lázaro Rosa-Violán's softer contemporary rooms. The contrast is most striking in the grand historic suites, where a chandelier and a high, decorated ceiling share space with pale furniture and sheer curtains. In the ordinary bedrooms, the historical drama largely disappears. The 56 rooms and suites favour quiet colours, comfortable beds and a sense of calm rather than theatrical luxury. It is a good place to sleep, if not always an exciting place to look around.

Room choice deserves a little attention. A Deluxe is thirty square metres, already a perfectly respectable Paris size; a Prestige offers thirty-five and may face either the street or the courtyard. A forty-square-metre Junior Suite gives you somewhere to sit without perching on the bed. For the old house at its most impressive, look towards the Grand Prestige Suite, seventy square metres with restored painted ceilings and a balcony. Paying more buys you not just extra space, but a different version of the building.

The courtyard is where those versions meet. Tables sit inside the old walls, open to the sky in warm weather and sheltered when Paris turns cold. It makes breakfast feel like an appointment worth keeping, particularly if you take your time over an omelette and another coffee. Later, Delano Café serves French-Mediterranean cooking under chef Paolo Minelli. The restaurant has already had several identities, beginning with Dani García's La Chambre Bleue and passing through a spell with Thierry Marx. The courtyard, happily, has proved more permanent than the name over the kitchen door.

There is a handsome bar too, with wood panelling and a mirrored ceiling, but it is wise not to arrive expecting Miami's nightlife. The pleasure of Maison Delano is that an evening can be quiet without seeming empty. Outside, the Madeleine, Concorde and the fashion houses are an easy walk away. The hotel has a gym and can arrange massages in your room, but no pool or proper spa. Those who want a destination hotel with endless facilities should look elsewhere; the attraction here is being able to slip out into Paris and return without ceremony.

It is expensive for a hotel whose most memorable public room is a courtyard, and some guests will find the understated bedrooms a little anonymous beside the historic suites. But a good stay is made of more than things to admire. There is the pleasure of walking home along a quiet street, of finding a table outside, of sleeping well after a full day in Paris. Blondel de Gagny knew that even the king needed someone to arrange his pleasures. Here, most of the best ones require very little arranging at all.