Hôtel Plaza Athénée is so swanky that Christian Dior opened his boutique across the road just to be close to it and named his famous Bar jacket after the hotel’s Le Relais Plaza bar. In the 110 years since it opened, the hotel has remained the epitome of Parisian glamour. Now, with two floors of extravagantly renovated rooms and suites, it has upped its own already ludicrously high stakes.
Designed by celebrated French designers Moinard Bétaille, the 49 modernised rooms and suites have retained the hotel’s famously 18th-century atmosphere, with silk headboards, damask curtains, vast chandeliers, gold-leaf mouldings and restored period furniture. The most eye-popping of these is the Royal Suite. At 450 square metres, it’s one of the largest in Paris, with four bedrooms and bathrooms, a living room, dining room, pantry and balcony, from which there are splendid views of Paris, as well as the hotel’s serene internal courtyard, La Cour Jardin, ablaze with Virginia creeper.
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