Hôtel Une Autre Chambre

The name promises another room; the hotel delivers another idea of Paris. Hidden on a quiet street near Arts et Métiers, Une Autre Chambre feels less like a conventional four-star hotel than an elegant family house whose owners happen to have impeccable taste. Its seventeen rooms honour seventeen remarkable women, from Olympe de Gouges and Simone Veil to Agnès Varda, Rosa Parks and Colette. Portraits, books and carefully chosen vintage objects give each room a story, while thick carpets, original wall coverings and seasonal colours keep the concept from feeling didactic. The comfort is serious and the atmosphere wonderfully hushed. Breakfast deserves time: good viennoiseries, house-made creations and cooked dishes served in the salon rather than dispatched as an obligation. The location is excellent for the Marais, the Picasso Museum and the river, yet the hotel’s best trick is making you slightly reluctant to go out. Intimate, feminine without cliché, and full of small acts of hospitality, it is one of those addresses you begin calling ‘our hotel’ after a single stay.