Maison Villeroy

At Maison Villeroy, checking in can happen in your bedroom. A butler takes care of the formalities there, rather than sending you to a desk in a busy lobby. In a Paris neighbourhood where grand hotels have devoted entire halls to the business of arrival, this is a small but revealing reversal. Maison Villeroy has only eleven keys. It is not trying to impress a crowd; it is trying to make you feel that somebody was expecting you.

The house was built for the Villeroy family, of porcelain-maker Villeroy & Boch, in the early twentieth century. Architect Ernest Rahir gave it a rather restrained face on rue Jean Goujon, then saved the drama for indoors: an oval entrance hall, a sweeping marble staircase, gilded ironwork and rooms with their original panelling. The building has been protected as a historic monument since 2014. But it does not feel like a house preserved under glass. People still have dinner where its former owners entertained, and you can take the stairs without being invited to admire them.

Upstairs, the mood changes. The Italian furniture maker Promemoria has furnished the bedrooms in pale greys, soft leather and polished wood, with the sort of beds that make an early start seem an unreasonable demand. The decoration is quieter than downstairs, which is probably wise. The four rooms measure twenty-eight to thirty-one square metres, comfortable but not extravagant at this price. The suites, at roughly fifty to fifty-eight, begin to feel like somewhere you might settle in. The two great apartments are another matter: more than a hundred square metres each, with kitchens and proper dining tables. In the Villeroy apartment, you can even ask for a private chef. It would be an unusual way to visit Paris and never need a restaurant reservation.

The staff make that domestic fantasy more convincing than the furniture does. There is a butler team around the clock, with check-in in your room, pressing when a suitcase has done its worst and help arranging the rest of the day. It is the sort of service that can sound faintly absurd in a brochure and prove useful within an hour of arriving. Outside, avenue Montaigne's fashion houses and the Seine are within easy walking distance. You can spend the day in a very public part of Paris and return to a building with remarkably little traffic through its corridors.

Not that the house is entirely yours. At Trente-Trois, chef Sébastien Sanjou cooks in a beautiful old panelled dining room, and people come from outside the hotel to eat there. Next door, the former Bar Jean Goujon has become Grappille, a wine bar led by sommelier Xavier Thuizat, where remarkable bottles can be explored by the glass. It gives the house just enough of a social life. The pleasure is that you can join it for an evening, then go upstairs without crossing a grand hotel lobby full of strangers.

Even the spa has a domestic twist. Rather than a swimming pool shared with dozens of other guests, there is a hammam, sauna and Jacuzzi that residents can reserve privately for an hour each day. Treatments now use Intuisse, and the small gym is there for anyone who wants more vigorous exercise. None of this is on the scale of a Paris palace. For two people who would rather have an hour to themselves, that may be the better bargain.

The qualification is the price. Eleven rooms do not make a bargain hotel, and the entry-level accommodation cannot compete with a palace for space or spectacle. There is no pool, no great lobby to watch Paris passing through, and the hushed bedrooms may be too restrained for anyone hoping for a lavishly decorated fantasy. You are paying for a certain kind of privacy, not for exclusive possession of every salon downstairs.

The grandes dames of Paris are wonderful at making an entrance. Maison Villeroy is interested in what happens after you've arrived: whether you can forget you are in a hotel at all. For the right traveller, that is quite a luxury.