Maison Proust

The most consequential decision at Maison Proust may be whether to concede a game of backgammon. The winter garden has chess and dominoes too, and a remarkably effective way of making a whole afternoon disappear. Outside, the Marais has galleries, shops and one of Paris's loveliest food markets. They will all survive without you. Marcel Proust spent years in Parisian salons, apparently learning little of practical use, before turning their conversations, jealousies and absurdities into one of the longest novels ever written. Here, the unproductive part comes first.

Proust never lived at 26 rue de Picardie; the upper Marais was not his habitual territory. Maison Proust is less a reconstruction of his home than an invitation to his imaginary dinner party. Jacques Garcia has filled the rooms with velvet, Cordoba leather, old paintings, tasselled lamps and gold leaf. He is not a designer with a fear of pattern. The circular library, beneath a starry gilded ceiling, holds old books, a handwritten letter and an early edition of Proust. Those last treasures are sensibly protected: the hotel may encourage idleness, but not quite that degree of informality.

Upstairs, the twenty-three rooms make a rather splendid guest list. Sarah Bernhardt and the society women occupy the lower floors; painters gather on the fourth, writers on the fifth, while Proust claims the sixth. Every room has its own portrait, fabrics and colours. The author turns up in smaller details as well: passages from his writing appear on the lampshades, so that even switching off the light becomes an opportunity to read. There is no need to have finished the novels to enjoy the joke. It might actually help if you haven't.

The rooms are intimate in size as well as atmosphere. A Deluxe is twenty square metres, so an elaborate wall hanging may claim more attention than your open suitcase. A Junior Suite, at thirty, offers a proper sitting area and writing desk; the fifty-square-metre Executive Suite feels more like the Parisian apartment the decoration promises. Some look towards the plane trees and the Carreau du Temple, others across rooftops. The prevailing mood is dark, soft and intensely furnished. Anyone seeking clean white walls and uncluttered surfaces has come to the wrong century.

Below, the salons make no distinction between eating and lingering. Breakfast arrives in the winter garden, a light meal can be taken in the library, and cocktails draw guests towards a bar dressed in wood and velvet. There is no formal restaurant to move you along between sittings. On Fridays, Colin Field, who spent nearly three decades at the Ritz's Bar Hemingway, appears behind the counter. The salons welcome outsiders as well, so a quiet afternoon may turn sociable without anybody announcing that the party has begun.

The hotel does insist on one appointment. Its ten-metre pool, beneath a dark timber ceiling in a little fantasy of Moroccan mosaics and columns, can be reserved privately for an hour. The slot is included for residents but needs arranging; the La Mer treatments cost extra. It is a delicious contradiction, having to book the precise hour during which you intend to forget the time. There is a hammam too, though no sprawling wellness complex or garden in which to walk off a long lunch.

Nor should one confuse theatrical charm with limitless space. The rooms can be small for the price, and the deeply decorated interiors may feel more like a stage set than a house. Fortunately the actual Marais is right outside. The Marché des Enfants Rouges, Musée Picasso and Place des Vosges are close, while the Musée Carnavalet preserves Proust's own bedroom for anyone curious about the rather less sociable second half of his life.

You may leave Maison Proust having seen fewer museums than planned. You might also remember an afternoon of nothing particularly important with ridiculous clarity. That, as its namesake eventually discovered, is where the material comes from.