9.0Avenue Montaigne, Paris
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From the avenue Montaigne, the Plaza Athénée is all front: red awnings, geraniums at the balconies, doormen at the door, the couture houses in their flagships up and down the street. It is the picture most people carry of the hotel, and it suggests something stately and a little remote. Step inside, and the first surprise is how much is going on.
A long gallery runs beside the courtyard, and this is where the hotel spends its day: breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea from a pastry kitchen of real distinction, drinks that carry on well after the shops outside have closed. It is the avenue's meeting place as much as the hotel's lobby. Beyond its windows lies the true centre of the house, the courtyard: walls hung with greenery, red parasols over the tables, windows looking down from every side. In summer it is a restaurant; in winter it has been turned into an ice rink.
Upstairs the house grows quieter and more formal. The classical rooms are Paris as a visitor imagines it, with a chandelier, silk at tall French windows and marble in the bathroom; some look out at the shop windows of the avenue, others down into the courtyard. The top floors are a different hotel, Art Deco and lighter, under the slope of the roof. A few suites on the avenue have balconies among the geraniums.
Evenings show how many hotels the Plaza holds. The formal dining room, gilded on every wall and across the ceiling, is set around a long table of antique marble, and it still expects its guests to dress for dinner. The Relais Plaza is its opposite, an Art Deco brasserie with a gilded Diana the huntress above the bar, regulars at their tables and a ready welcome for anyone eating alone. The bar is the newest room and keeps the latest hours: a transparent counter under a ceiling of deep-blue fabric.
Other Paris palaces have busy public rooms. The Plaza's belong to the avenue outside: to the people who come to shop and meet on the street of couture and, when the collections are shown, to the fashion world, which fills the house. That is the attraction, and it is also the limit. Rooms over the main courtyard look down on whatever the season has put there. There is a Dior spa below ground but no pool, and once the boutiques close the avenue goes quiet, so the evening moves inside.
The guest who will love it wants a hotel with life in it: tea among Parisians, dinner in a room that needs no planning, a last drink without leaving the building. The guest looking for a retreat, with silence downstairs, a pool and a garden, will find it more public than its façade suggests. From the pavement the Plaza looks like a monument. Inside, it is one of the city's meeting places, and it happens to have bedrooms.
On the façade
Nearly two thousand geraniums are planted on the building every year.
Only certain suites guarantee the Eiffel Tower. On the avenue, the ones with a balcony are smaller than those without, and theirs are the balconies with the tower in view. From an ordinary avenue room it may appear down the street, but it is not part of the promise.
Several categories come either in the classical style or in the Art Deco of the top floors, and nothing in the name says which. Ask when booking: the difference is not only decoration but light and the shape of the room.
Below the top floors, every room is dressed like this. The windows face either the avenue or a courtyard, and 'courtyard' can mean the main one, a restaurant in summer, or a quieter inner one: the room descriptions say which.
The long gallery off the lobby is where the avenue drops in: columns, chandeliers and armchairs from breakfast until late, with afternoon tea in between. It is open to anyone, so a room upstairs buys you a seat there without a walk home afterwards.
At a glance
Where
25 avenue Montaigne, 8th arrondissement, among the couture houses; the Seine at the end of the avenue
Why this one
On the street of couture, the Plaza is where the avenue meets, takes tea and, when the collections are shown, stays: a palace inside the life of the street.
The rooms, the gallery and the summer tables all turn on a planted courtyard, a piece of calm and greenery among the boutiques of the Golden Triangle.
A formal dining room for dressing up, an Art Deco brasserie for an easy dinner and a late bar: several nights can pass without repeating an evening or leaving the house.
The Edit Notes
Almost everything that gives the Plaza its life is open to anyone: tea in La Galerie, dinner at the Relais Plaza, a drink at the bar, lunch on the terrace. If that is what draws you, come for an evening and sleep somewhere quieter. Book a room for what visitors never get: the courtyard from your own window, the gym before outside members are let in, and a bed a lift away when the bar closes.
At the bottom of the list, read the occupancy. The Classic Single is sold for one guest, and the Superior, at 30 m², for two at most. The Deluxe, at 38 m², is the first room a couple can comfortably live in for several nights. The next real step is the Superior Suite, at 60 m², the first with a separate sitting room; every junior suite below it, however large, is one room.
The formal dining room is an evening in itself: dressed, unhurried and best on a night with nothing after it. For a performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, a few doors along the avenue, eat early at the Relais Plaza and come back to La Galerie, which keeps serving long after the restaurants have closed.
During the fashion weeks the hotel is at its busiest and its public rooms at their most crowded: the best time to see the Plaza's world, and the worst to find calm in it. Guests coming for Paris rather than for fashion should book either side of the shows.
The price question
The Plaza is priced with the great palaces and gives what they give: handsome rooms, attentive service, an address few can match. What sets it apart is the life downstairs, and that is also what a guest gives up: quiet public rooms. There is no pool, the formal dining room is formal, and when fashion fills the city it fills the hotel. For a guest who wants a hotel with a pulse, the premium is well spent. For one who wants a sanctuary, Paris has palaces built for that.
Book it if you want a hotel with life in it, the avenue Montaigne as your base, and evenings that move from a dressed-up dinner to a late bar without leaving the building. Look elsewhere if you want a retreat, a pool, a garden to walk in or a quiet lobby.
Le Bristol Paris
On the Faubourg Saint-Honoré: a French garden to walk in and a pool on the sixth floor, with a calmer, residential manner.
La Réserve Paris
Forty rooms and suites facing the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, with a pool and a butler for every room: a private house rather than a public one.
Cheval Blanc Paris
On the Seine at La Samaritaine: a contemporary palace with a 30-metre pool, for a guest who wants the new rather than the legendary.
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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