Award: Most legendary

When César Ritz, alongside culinary legend Auguste Escoffier, opened his hotel on the Place Vendôme in 1898, he set out to create the finest hotel in the world. Not only did he succeed in redefining what a hotel could be, complete with the radically novel features for the era—electricity on every floor! private bathrooms!—but it also holds true more than a century later. The now-mythical cast of characters includes Proust, Coco Chanel, who made the hotel her primary home for 30 years and has a suite named in her honour, and Ernest Hemingway, who inspired not only one of the world’s most recognisable cocktail bars but a commemorative suite, too. Today, it’s Hollywood and small-screen A-listers who pass through the Ritz’s revolving front door year-round and into one of 142 rooms and suites dressed up in creams, blush pinks, and soft blues, with Louis XV furnishings, brocade textiles, pastoral paintings, and golden swan-shaped faucets and bathtub taps. Guests have ample choice for drinking and dining, from the one-Michelin-starred contemporary restaurant Espadon run by Eugénie Béziat, the Bar Vendôme (which never has a quiet night, especially with live thematic music dinners on Wednesdays), the Salon Proust for tea time, and the Ritz Bar—helpful when the Hemingway is, invariably, packed to the gills.

Best amenity: The Ritz Club and Spa, a private member’s fitness and wellness club also open to hotel guests, including a 16-metre pool (beneath a painted sky), a David Mallett hair salon, and a new partnership with La Prairie, which adds seven facial treatments, including two for men, a signature treatment, and an exfoliating treatment, to the pampering options.

Can’t-miss experience: Guests can arrange a day with the head chef of the École Ritz Escoffier, the hotel’s prestigious, on-site cooking school, beginning with a market tour before returning to the property for a hands-on cooking class.

From $3,386  

Award: Most over-the-top

Originally built for Louis XV in 1758, Hôtel de Crillon has anchored the northwestern corner of Place de la Concorde ever since. So much has happened within its walls: Marie Antoinette was a regular for piano lessons. The 1778 Franco-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed in some of its rooms. Madonna shacked up in the Bernstein suite for months at a time. As over-the-top as it was for Parisians well into the aughts, it needed a refresh—one that came from the visionary architect-artistic director Aline Asmar d’Amman over the course of a four-year restoration. She infused a kind of poetic opulence, big on comfort, that has made its common areas the place to be and be seen for travellers and Parisians. There are 78 rooms and 46 suites, including two Karl Lagerfeld apartments the late designer co-designed with d’Amman (which includes an all-marble bathroom that looks as if it was cut from one single block) and the Sense, A Rosewood Spa pool, lined with more than 17,000 gold mosaic tiles and lit from above by a glass skylight. Ceramic walls surround the pool, created by New York–based artist Peter Lane, that made us think of Monet’s Water Lilies. Nonos & Comestibles marks superstar chef Paul Pairet’s return to Europe after decades in Shanghai, while the Jardin d’Hiver is a plush cocoon for all-day dining, tea time, and late-night drinks that spill over into what might just be Paris’s most exquisite hotel bar, Bar Les Ambassadeurs.

Best amenity: Hard to beat having an on-site pastry shop and tea salon. Butterfly Pâtisserie offers individual-sized works of delicious art from the hotel’s pastry chef, Matthieu Carlin—ideal when you have a packed itinerary and aren’t able to settle in for a full tea-time experience.

Can’t-miss experience: Did we mention the most beautiful hotel bar in Paris? Bar Les Ambassadeurs has it all: soaring marble walls, a frescoed ceiling, chandeliers draped in metal chains for an unexpected rock-and-roll edge, and live music year-round to go with exceptional seasonal cocktails and a sharp selection of grower champagnes.

From $2,936

Award: Most intimate

Forty rooms and suites, no conventional lobby, and plenty of intimate salons make La Réserve, which opened in 2015 in a transformed Napoléon III-era mansion near the Champs-Élysées, more like a private club. That intimacy has drawn a reliable clientele that finds the scale of the city’s other palace hotels too imposing and impractical. The cocooning effect is helped along by Jacques Garcia’s interiors, layered with taupes and burgundies, velvet and lacquer (and some 6,000 metres of damask silk thrown in the mix), into a hideaway that’s both ornate and relaxing. The Nescens spa is perhaps the only area of the hotel that isn’t lavish and tasselled—though Garcia’s love for red is still very much intact—and offers a nice break from the scene upstairs. Because as discreet as the salon, Pagode restaurant, Gaspard bar, and Veranda seafood restaurant are, it’s consistently a who’s who of local cultural figures and celebs passing through.

Best amenity: The Duc de Morny Library, a wood-paneled space with an open, working fireplace, lined with books and dressed in green velvet, reserved exclusively for guests. Block time in your luxuriating schedules to settle in for hours with a glass of wine or a cup of the house hot chocolate.

Can’t-miss experience: A three-Michelin-star lunch or dinner at Le Gabriel, the jewel box of a fine dining restaurant overseen by the prodigiously talented chef Jérôme Banctel, whose cooking is anchored in France but visibly shaped by Japanese and Turkish techniques (and eschews butter and cream).

From $2,943

Award: Most discreet

The only château-hotel within city limits sits behind iron gates near the Porte Dauphine in the 16th arrondissement, at a clear remove from most tourists. Built on the former private residence of statesman Adolphe Thiers, it became a scholarship foundation in 1892 before reinventing itself as a London-style private members’ club in the 1980s. The vibe can still be felt within the hotel’s townhouse-style scale and countryside-chic design. Several years ago, star designer Laura Gonzalez brought a garden-inspired, neoclassical refresh to the property, which includes 48 rooms and suites, two standalone pavilions, and a separate villa with four fully serviced apartments, some with private terraces and gardens. Dining-wise, guests are spoiled: there’s Bellefeuille, the hotel’s Michelin-starred winter garden restaurant, for sophisticated farm-to-table cooking; an outdoor Versailles-style pergola for grilled dishes in the warmer months; and the Library lounge, a hushed, English-style bar housed in a former student library. It’s stocked floor to ceiling with leather-bound books, offers a creative cocktail menu, a wonderful tea-time experience, and privacy: it’s mostly reserved for hotel guests and private members.

Best amenity: One of only two Guerlain spas in Paris, with Greco-Roman decorative details. The space spans two floors, has three treatment rooms, and one of the most breathtaking pools for practicing your backstroke as sunlight shines through.

Can’t-miss experience: Spend time in more than 4,000 square metres of garden without ever leaving the property. Admire the roses, rhododendrons, and ferns, and visit the greenhouse in peace and quiet.

From $1144

Award: Best F&B

Opened in 1928 on the avenue that bears its name, the George V has long been the most lavish palace hotel in a city brimming with them. The Four Seasons property, with 243 rooms, including 60 suites that are more like apartments, is as grand and palatial as ever, with 17th-century Flanders tapestries, Louis XVI-style furnishings, and a mix of classic and contemporary works of art. Old-world elegance is playfully disrupted by Jeff Leatham’s monumental floral installations (made up of 11,000 flowers each week, to be exact). At the end of 2025, architect Pierre-Yves Rochon completed a full renovation and upgrade of every room—the first since his 1999 redesign—without the property ever closing its doors. F&B is really the star of the hotel, though, with six Michelin stars across three restaurants. Le Cinq, chef Christian Le Squer’s three-starred spot, remains one of the defining expressions of French haute cuisine; L’Orangerie under chef Alan Taudon offers a plant-forward menu built around French sauces; and Le George, led by Italian chef Simone Zanoni, rounds out the experience with a Mediterranean menu.

Best amenity: A toss-up between the spa, which certainly earns its reputation (there’s a 16.7-metre pool, marble hammam, and six treatment rooms stocked with high-tech Swiss brands for anti-aging and regenerative pampering), and the breakfast spread, which includes the usual features and a few rare items like local pollen and honey, an intriguing vegan butter, and olive-oil brioche.

Can’t-miss experience: Get outside and join the hotel’s intimate running group. Each morning, hotel staff lead a small group of guests on a 10-kilometre run through a just-waking Paris. You’ll get pristine landmarks, empty streets, and an elevated heart rate.

From $3,950

Award: Most playful

Le Grand Mazarin marks a milestone for Maisons Pariente, the family group behind Crillon le Brave, Le Coucou, and Lou Pinet, as its first urban hotel. Swedish designer Martin Brudnizki’s maximalist touch makes it memorable and certainly the most eclectic in the portfolio. Located in the Marais, a few blocks from the Seine, the name nods not to Cardinal Mazarin himself but to the literary salons of his era, when the great thinkers, performers, and artists of 17th-century Paris gathered in lavish settings. Brudnizki translates that spirit into baroque details, floral frescoes, and beds with Aubusson-style tapestries that double as canopies across 61 rooms and suites. The effect is resolutely whimsical and fun. The restaurant Boubalé extends that fun with a festive menu rooted in Levantine and Mediterranean tradition; it gets ramped up in the adjacent bar and, especially, at Le Petit Bazaar, a basement speakeasy-meets-dance party led by a DJ who sets the rhythm until 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.

Best amenity: One of the more unique minibar selections in Paris: locally sourced snacks, Café Joyeux coffee, and a premium skincare selection delivered to your room within 30 minutes.

Can’t-miss experience: Leave the high energy behind and relax in the small-but-mighty wellness area that includes the hotel’s star feature: an ethereal striped mosaic-tiled pool and jacuzzi crowned by a vaulted, frescoed ceiling by the artist Jacques Merle.

From $938 

Award: Most romantic

Romance and Marcel Proust may not be obvious bedfellows, but this two-year-old boutique property in the North Marais was designed by Jacques Garcia to bring the two together. In a restored six-story hotel particulier, Garcia’s signature Belle Epoque style unfolds in dimly lit salons, a lavish bar and winter garden, and a library alcove with more than a thousand rare books, pre-dating Proust’s death, arranged beneath a domed gold-leaf painted ceiling that nods to the Opéra Garnier. Upstairs, impressionists, writers, socialites, and painters who moved in Proust’s orbit, from Sarah Bernhardt to Emile Zola and Claude Monet, lent their names to a room or suite. All are appointed with plush carpets, moulded ceilings, period artwork, and bathrooms lined in Córdoba leather, with lampshades bearing excerpts from In Search of Lost Time.

Best amenity: The sexy Moorish-inspired La Mer spa, with its 20-metre heated pool, hammam, and sauna, can be privatised for an hour each day of a stay. Not into a swim? There are three treatment rooms for personalised massages and facials.

Can’t-miss experience: A few Friday evenings each month, Colin Field, the Hemingway Bar’s legendary mixologist for 30 years, returns to shake a short menu of his own cocktails and hold court with devoted regulars.

From $2,198

Awards: Best Eiffel Tower views / best rooftop

If grandeur and luxury were measured in gold leaf, crystal, and contemporary art per square metre, the Peninsula Paris would set the standard. The 1908 Beaux-Arts building on Avenue Kléber, steps from the Arc de Triomphe, carries a remarkable history: Gershwin composed An American in Paris within its walls, and the Paris Peace Accords ending the Vietnam War were signed here before it became the Peninsula in 2014. It has delivered a master class in service and contemporary comfort ever since, with its own blinged-out fleet of limos, a Rolls-Royce Phantom II and Mini Coopers, and 200 sophisticated rooms and suites, each dotted with works of art. Bonus: they are also the most generously proportioned in Paris, with five of the 34 suites boasting private rooftop gardens. Dining and summer imbibing on the rooftop (panoramic views guaranteed) are a big draw for well-heeled Parisians. You’ll find them packed into the Kléber bar made historic by Henry Kissinger, digging into refined Cantonese fare at Lili, and indulging in tea time at Le Lobby. But the standout is the double-Michelin-starred L’Oiseau Blanc, a showcase for chef David Bizet’s contemporary French cooking, with unobstructed skyline views.

Best amenity: Luxury is in the details, like the nail polish dryer hidden in each room’s vanity, and personalized accessories for furry guests.

Can’t-miss experience: One of several food-focused experiences run through the Peninsula Academy, from a rooftop garden tour with chef David Bizet to a family-friendly pastry-making class with chef Anne Coruble.

From $2,681

Award: Biggest ‘wow’ factor

When LVMH opened Cheval Blanc Paris in September 2021, it completed the transformation of La Samaritaine—the Belle Époque department store the group restored on the banks of the Seine—into one of the most architecturally ambitious hospitality projects in Parisian history. The 72 rooms and suites, designed by Peter Marino, right down to the armchairs and coffee tables, showcase tone-on-tone residential luxury, each drawing its color palette and textures from jaw-dropping river views through every bay window. There’s more color and character in each of the four on-site restaurants, including the three-Michelin-starred Plénitude, led by chef Arnaud Donckele (with a year-long wait list and menu built around sauces); the modern bar-brasserie Le Tout Paris and Langosteria, both with wraparound balconies, and a mindblowing kaiseki experience at Hakuba.

Best amenity: In-room: the walk-in hammam showers. Everywhere else: the baked goods, pâtisseries, and chocolates prepared by one of the city’s most talented chefs, Maxime Frédéric, and his team. If given the choice at breakfast, get the waffle.

Can’t-miss experience: Don’t fret if you can’t get into Plénitude. You can indulge at the Dior spa instead by booking one of 48 different treatment options and taking a dip in the 30-metre infinity pool—the largest of any Paris hotel by most measures.

From $3,386 

Award: Most Parisian

Judging by the Parisians who regularly hold court at Café Antonia, come for cocktails after dark, and book treatments at Spa Le Bristol by La Mer, it’s indisputable: Le Bristol is the most Parisian of the city’s Palace hotels. Yet it has always attracted the foreign and famous: Charlie Chaplin and Rita Hayworth spent a few nights. Now it’s Leonardo DiCaprio and Gillian Anderson checking in, along with smart travellers from around the world enchanted by its old-world grandeur, picturesque English-style courtyard garden, and famously good service. Named for the 18th-century Bishop Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, it has been setting the standard for luxury since it opened in 1925 (and has been privately owned by the Oetker Collection since 1978). The 190 rooms and suites are done up with 18th-century French aesthetics and antique furnishings. No room is the same, but most lean into the house palette of blush and powder blue, and all are generously sized (at least 30 square metres) with oversized beds, showers, and bathrooms. That classic vibe extends to the three-starred restaurant Epicure, now run by chef Arnaud Faye, a charming kids’ club, and plush seating areas where you might catch Socrates, the resident Burmese cat, on the move toward his next comfortable spot to sleep.

Best amenity: The stunner of a rooftop indoor (and heated) pool, wrapped in wood panelling like a 1920s luxury liner. Expansive windows bring you sweeping views over Paris as you lounge in your robe or flex with a few backstrokes.

Can’t-miss experience: Artisanal craft is taken very seriously here: the baking team mills their own flour, chocolate and bread are made in-house, and cheese ages on site. Sample it all at one of the hotel’s restaurants, pick up provisions at the adjoining gourmet shop, or head into the cellars for a private tasting, where sommeliers preside over more than 10,000 bottles, many of them rare.

From $2,963