Sofitel Le Scribe Paris Opéra

On 28 December 1895, a handful of Parisians paid one franc to go downstairs at the Grand Café on boulevard des Capucines. In a basement room called the Salon Indien, they watched workers leave a factory, a baby eat breakfast and a gardener get drenched by his own hose. Ten little films, lasting barely twenty minutes between them, were enough to start a revolution. The place is now part of Sofitel Le Scribe Paris Opéra. It is an extraordinary amount of history to have beneath a hotel.

The name belongs to Eugène Scribe, the nineteenth-century playwright who perfected the well-made play: everything arranged, every surprise prepared, the audience sent home satisfied. The building has supplied plenty of less predictable plots of its own. The Jockey Club occupied its grand rooms from 1863. After the Liberation in 1944, war correspondents turned it into a bustling newsroom. An account in Time described camp beds, army rations and hot water that arrived only once or twice a week. The reporters would probably have appreciated today's bathrooms.

Designer Tristan Auer gave the hotel its present look in a renovation completed in 2020. There are hints of a gentlemen's club downstairs, while upstairs the 201 rooms and suites borrow from a comfortable Haussmann apartment: mouldings, books, upholstered headboards and the occasional fireplace. Even the bathroom ceilings borrow their colours from Chagall's painting at the Opéra Garnier. It is a hotel that enjoys telling you where its ideas came from. Happily, you can also ignore the references and simply enjoy a very good bed.

The rooms require more attention than the decoration. A Superior measures twenty square metres and faces the courtyard: quiet, but small enough to make two open suitcases a negotiation. A Luxury gives you twenty-five and may face either the courtyard or rue Scribe. The twenty-seven-square-metre Luxury Premium has both a bathtub and a separate shower, a better arrangement for anyone spending several nights here. For real breathing room, a thirty-five-square-metre Junior Suite adds a sitting area and sofa bed, though its view is towards the street. Balconies and terraces belong to particular suites, so check the category rather than assuming a higher price brings outdoor space.

Downstairs, Rivages is set beneath a glass roof, with a bar where you can have a cocktail before going out or after coming home. Scribe & Cie, the hotel's café, occupies an address where Louis Vuitton opened a shop in 1871. These days the attractions are coffee, cakes and a quick lunch rather than trunks. It is a useful little place, though it currently opens on weekdays only. Rivages serves dinner, and room service runs around the clock. In a neighbourhood full of possibilities, having somewhere easy to eat when you are tired is a considerable virtue.

And there are possibilities everywhere. The Palais Garnier is practically around the corner, the department stores are close enough to tempt even reluctant shoppers, and Place Vendôme and the covered passages are pleasant walks away. Opéra métro station makes the rest of the city straightforward to reach. This is central Paris at its busiest, however, with traffic, offices and crowds of people heading somewhere. It pays to choose a courtyard room if a good night's sleep matters more than watching the street.

The hotel has a gym and a small wellness area for treatments, rather than a swimming pool or a palace-sized spa. Access to the hammam is an extra charge alongside a treatment. Nor should you expect the intimacy of a family-run boutique hotel. Le Scribe is a polished, professionally run Sofitel, and at its entry prices the bedrooms can feel modest for five-star Paris.

Still, it is a rather satisfying place to come back to. You can spend the evening at the Opéra, walk home in minutes and sleep somewhere that has been receiving an audience of its own for more than 160 years. The stories are excellent. The useful part is that you don't have to do anything with them.