Maison Souquet

Maison Souquet has a selective memory. The house on rue de Bruxelles spent most of the twentieth century as an ordinary hotel, but the people who remade it in 2015 were interested in a much shorter chapter. According to the hotel's account, a Madame Souquet ran a discreet brothel here from 1905 to 1907. Jacques Garcia and the owners gathered antiques that dated no later than that final year, then furnished the place as if the intervening century had never happened. It is an extravagant way of editing a building's biography.

Two red lanterns mark the entrance, just around the corner from the Moulin Rouge. Inside, the effect is immediate and rather overwhelming. The first salon is a confection of gilded Moorish arches, twisted columns and velvet. It wasn't made for this hotel at all: the room was originally created in 1895 for a Belgian aristocrat's house in Brussels, then brought here and painstakingly adapted. You could spend a long time inspecting it. More happily, you can also sit down. A hotel this richly decorated might have been unbearable if everyone treated the furniture as museum exhibits.

Beyond it lies the Salon des Petits Bonheurs, a dark, wood-panelled bar with a fireplace, old books and the kind of low lighting that makes another cocktail sound sensible. Then comes the winter garden, where the room finally seems to take a breath among ivy and jasmine. The salons welcome people who aren't staying here, so a drink can turn into a rather enjoyable evening of watching strangers discover the place for the first time. There is no separate formal restaurant, but breakfast, lunch and dinner can all be served in these rooms. You need not go out simply because you're hungry.

Upstairs, the fantasy becomes more personal, and the practical choices become important. The rooms take their names from famous courtesans, though women such as La Païva and La Belle Otero lived on a rather grander scale than the original establishment appears to have done. Some bedrooms are inspired by Napoleon III, others by Chinese or Indian interiors; not a square inch seems to have escaped Garcia's attention. A Deluxe is only sixteen to eighteen square metres, with a bath or shower depending on the room. All that velvet and dark wood can make a small space feel smaller. A Junior Suite, at twenty-six to twenty-eight square metres, gives you somewhere to sit and is a much more forgiving choice for a stay of several nights. The two-bedroom suites, at fifty-five square metres, make more sense for friends travelling together. Ask which particular room you're getting: the styles and bathrooms differ considerably.

The best surprise requires going downstairs again. Behind a closed door is the Salon d'Eau, a ten-metre pool beneath a deep-blue vaulted ceiling scattered with gold stars. Beside it is a hammam. Instead of sharing it with whoever happens to arrive, residents can reserve the whole place privately for an hour each day, included in the stay. That is an unusually satisfying privilege for a hotel of this size, and perhaps a better expression of luxury than all the velvet upstairs. Book the hour early, particularly if you have a preferred time.

The address comes with a personality of its own. Pigalle is nearby, with the Moulin Rouge's queues and plenty of evening noise, yet rue de Bruxelles feels unexpectedly withdrawn. Blanche métro station is close, and Montmartre and the cafés of South Pigalle are easy to explore. The rooms are dark by design, the entry categories expensive for their size, and anyone wanting bright contemporary minimalism should choose another door. This is much more persuasive for a romantic weekend than for ten days of work.

The hotel's celebrated courtesans are part of a seductive invented world, not a documentary record of Madame Souquet's clientele. That distinction is worth keeping in mind. Garcia has made the old story impossibly sumptuous; the pleasure of staying here is that, once you've admired the set, someone hands you a drink, shows you to your room and lets you have the pool to yourself. For a couple of nights, the illusion is quite enough.