The best luxury hotels in Paris, ranked for 2026

If someone tells me they have one week in Paris and they want the stay to be the memory, I book Le Bristol. It is the hotel other Palace hotels quietly measure themselves against, and the reason is not the marble. It is that the Oetker family have kept it running like a very large private house on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré rather than a flagship. Staff stay for decades. They remember what you drink. There is a Burmese cat called Fa-Raon who has the run of the lobby and is not a marketing device.

The rooms are the largest of any Paris Palace on average, which matters more than any other single fact in this city, because Parisian luxury usually means beautiful and small. The garden courtyard is a genuine 1,200 square metre garden, not a light well with pots, and in May you can have lunch under the chestnut trees with no sense of being in the eighth arrondissement at all. Upstairs there is the swimming pool on the sixth floor, built as a teak decked boat under a painted Saint-Tropez sky, which sounds absurd and is wonderful.

The food is the other argument. Epicure holds three Michelin stars and is one of maybe four restaurants in the city where the classical French kitchen is still being run at full stretch rather than as heritage theatre. The winter dining room, the 114 Faubourg brasserie and the Bar du Bristol cover the rest of a week. Condé Nast keeps describing the suites as sumptuously oversized, and having stood in one, that is the correct phrase.

• From about $1,600 a night for an entry Superior room in shoulder season
• Official Palace distinction, awarded by the French Ministry of Tourism
• Epicure holds three Michelin stars, 114 Faubourg holds one
• Sixth floor rooftop pool designed as a teak deck under a painted sky
• 1,200 square metre private French garden, rare in central Paris
• Two minutes from the Élysée Palace and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré boutiques

The George V wins on execution. Four Seasons bought a 1928 art deco building in 1996, spent two years and a fortune stripping it back, and what came out is the most operationally flawless hotel in Paris. Nothing is late. Nothing is forgotten. If you are travelling for work, arriving at midnight, or bringing family who will judge the whole trip on whether the laundry came back right, this is the booking.

Then there are the flowers. Jeff Leatham has been the artistic director here since 1999 and the lobby installations are changed weekly at a scale nobody else attempts: thousands of stems, submerged orchids, red anthuriums in vases taller than a person. It sounds like a detail. It is the thing people photograph and remember, and it sets the register for everything else.

Three restaurants hold Michelin stars, which no other hotel in the world can currently claim in the same building. Le Cinq is the formal room, Le George is Mediterranean and the easier booking, and L'Orangerie is the light one. The courtyard, planted and heated, is where you should eat in May and September. The trade against Le Bristol is warmth: the George V is superbly run, but it is a grand hotel, not a house.

• From about $1,900 a night, the highest entry rate of the ten here
• Official Palace distinction and Four Seasons' European flagship
• Three Michelin starred restaurants under one roof: Le Cinq, Le George, L'Orangerie
• Jeff Leatham floral installations changed weekly since 1999
• Six hundred square metre spa with an 17 metre pool, unusual for central Paris
• Ninety seconds from Avenue Montaigne and five minutes from the Champs-Élysées

LVMH opened this in 2021 inside the restored La Samaritaine department store and it changed the top of the Paris market. Only 72 keys, which for a building of that size means rooms that are genuinely enormous by Parisian standards, and a third of the inventory is suites. Peter Marino did the interiors in a restrained contemporary French register, so no gilt, no swagged silk, just very good materials and light off the river.

The view is the reason it ranks this high. From the Seine facing rooms you have the Pont Neuf, the tip of the Île de la Cité and the Institut de France in a single frame, and there is no other hotel in Paris with that address. The Dior Spa is the flagship for the house, six suites each themed on a Dior collection, a 30 metre pool under a mirrored ceiling, hammam, sauna and a snow shower. Staff are called ambassadors and dressed by Patou, which tells you the level of production.

Dining is the strongest single argument after the view. Plénitude under Arnaud Donckele holds three Michelin stars and is the most talked about hotel restaurant to open in Paris this decade. Limbar does the pastry, Le Tout-Paris on the seventh floor is the rooftop brasserie with the panorama, and Langosteria brought Milanese seafood upstairs. Book Le Tout-Paris even if you sleep elsewhere.

• From about $2,000 a night, the highest rates in this guide
• Opened September 2021 inside the restored La Samaritaine building
• Seventy two keys only, and 26 of them are suites
• Plénitude holds three Michelin stars under Arnaud Donckele
• Flagship Dior Spa with a 30 metre pool, hammam and snow shower
• Le Tout-Paris rooftop brasserie has the best hotel terrace view in the city

Le Meurice opened in 1835 and has the best address of the ten: a full block of the Rue de Rivoli facing the Tuileries, four minutes from the Louvre on foot, with Place Vendôme behind you. The public rooms are the eighteenth century done at full volume, modelled on the salons of Versailles, and then Philippe Starck came through in 2007 and put a surrealist joke in every corner because Salvador Dalí lived here for a month a year for three decades.

Ask for a Tuileries facing room on the third floor or above. You get the garden, the Eiffel Tower over the treeline and the Musée d'Orsay across the river, and there is nothing else in this price band with that frame. The Belle Étoile suite on the seventh floor has a private terrace that runs the full width of the roof and takes in the whole skyline, which is the single most spectacular room in this guide if you can justify it.

Restaurant le Meurice Alain Ducasse sits under a ceiling copied from the Salon de la Paix at Versailles and holds two Michelin stars. Le Dalí, under the Ara Starck ceiling canvas, is where I would actually eat, and the afternoon tea there is the best value luxury ritual in central Paris. Cédric Grolet ran the pastry here for years and the standard has held.

• From about $1,400 a night, the best entry price of the Rivoli Palaces
• Official Palace distinction, Dorchester Collection
• Opened 1835, Philippe Starck redesign in 2007
• Restaurant le Meurice Alain Ducasse holds two Michelin stars
• Salvador Dalí stayed one month a year for around thirty years
• Four minutes' walk to the Louvre, six to Place Vendôme

César Ritz opened this with Auguste Escoffier in 1898 and effectively invented the modern luxury hotel here: private bathrooms, telephones and electricity in every room, at a point when none of that was normal. Then it closed in 2012 for the first time in its history and reopened four years and roughly $450 million later, with 159 rooms rebuilt as 142, of which 71 are suites.

Fifteen suites are named for people who lived here. Coco Chanel had a suite for 34 years. Hemingway has a suite and, more usefully, a bar. Marcel Proust, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Maria Callas all have rooms carrying their names and their furniture is museum grade. If the history is why you are coming to Paris, no other hotel competes, and the restoration got the balance right: brighter, lighter, still gilded to the core, with the red carpet and the amber scent intact.

Bar Hemingway is the reason I keep going back even when I sleep elsewhere. It seats about 25, Colin Field made it the most awarded hotel bar in the world, and every wall is covered in boxing gloves, clippings and regulars' business cards. Get there when it opens at six or you will not get in. Elsewhere, L'Espadon holds two Michelin stars, the Ritz Club pool is the prettiest in Paris, and the École Ritz Escoffier runs cooking classes worth an afternoon.

• From about $1,700 a night in shoulder season
• Opened 1898, closed 2012, reopened June 2016 after a roughly $450 million restoration
• 142 rooms of which 71 are suites, 15 named for former residents
• Bar Hemingway is consistently ranked among the best hotel bars in the world
• L'Espadon holds two Michelin stars, Ritz Bar and Salon Proust cover the rest
• Directly on Place Vendôme, next door to the jewellery houses

Opened in 1913 on what became the most expensive shopping street in France, the Plaza Athénée is the fashion hotel and does not pretend otherwise. Dior is next door and has been since 1946. During the March and September shows the lobby is the industry's canteen and the rates go vertical. If that is the trip you are taking, this is the correct base and nothing else is close.

The geranium balconies are the signature and they are worth the surcharge: an Avenue Montaigne room with the shutters open onto that red line of flowers is the most Parisian thing in this guide. Upper floor rooms on the courtyard side catch the Eiffel Tower. La Cour Jardin, the ivy walled courtyard, is where Paris eats lunch in June, and in winter the same space becomes an ice rink.

Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée holds three Michelin stars and runs a naturalité menu built on fish, vegetables and grains, under 10,000 Swarovski crystals. Le Relais Plaza is the art deco brasserie and the easier, better everyday room. The Dior Spa here was the brand's first, opened in 2008, and remains excellent. Against Le Bristol the trade is atmosphere: this hotel is a stage, and it is always performing.

• From about $1,500 a night outside fashion weeks
• Official Palace distinction, Dorchester Collection, opened 1913
• Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée holds three Michelin stars
• The first Dior Institut spa, opened here in 2008
• La Cour Jardin courtyard becomes an ice rink each winter
• Directly opposite Dior on Avenue Montaigne

This was Prince Roland Bonaparte's mansion, built in 1896 in Chaillot when Paris was besotted with Asia and the Musée Guimet had just opened up the road. Shangri-La took it over and opened in December 2010, and the historic salons on the ground floor are classified monuments, so what you are walking through is genuinely the Bonaparte family's house rather than a pastiche of one.

The proposition is the tower. Around a third of the 100 keys look straight at the Eiffel Tower across the river, close enough that the hourly light show fills the window, and no other hotel in Paris delivers that from the bed. Condé Nast's reviewer described the palette as pale pinks, Alice blues and mint greens with Bonapartean gold, which is accurate, and the effect is more delicate than the Rivoli Palaces.

Shang Palace was the first Chinese restaurant in France to win a Michelin star and is still the best Cantonese dining in the city. La Bauhinia under the art nouveau glass dome does the breakfast and afternoon tea. There is a 16 metre pool, which in central Paris is a real amenity. The catch is location: the 16th is handsome, quiet and residential, so you are taking taxis to dinner in the 1st or the 6th.

• From about $1,300 a night, the best value entry rate of the Eiffel view hotels
• Opened December 2010 in Prince Roland Bonaparte's 1896 mansion
• Around one third of the 100 keys have direct Eiffel Tower views
• Shang Palace was the first Chinese restaurant in France to hold a Michelin star
• Sixteen metre indoor pool and a full spa, rare in a Paris townhouse hotel
• Ten minutes on foot to the Trocadéro esplanade and the Musée Guimet

The building is one of the two matched palaces Ange-Jacques Gabriel put on the north side of Place de la Concorde in the 1750s, and it has been a hotel since 1909. Rosewood closed it for four years and reopened in 2017, and the restoration is the most interesting of the recent Paris projects because it did not try to freeze the place in the eighteenth century. Classified salons were restored to the millimetre; everything else was handed to contemporary designers, including two Grands Appartements by Karl Lagerfeld.

What that gives you is a Palace that feels current. Rooms are cleaner lined than at the Ritz or the Meurice, there is a proper 16 metre pool and spa underground, and Les Ambassadeurs, the gilded ballroom that used to be the formal restaurant, is now the bar. Sitting in that room with a drink, under the mirrors and the marble, is one of the better hours available in this city for the price of a cocktail.

L'Écrin holds a Michelin star, Brasserie d'Aumont is the all day room, and the Jardin d'Hiver is where Parisians actually take tea. The location is unmatched for a first visit: the Tuileries on one side, the Champs-Élysées on the other, the Seine and the Orsay a five minute walk. Against Le Bristol it is a shade less warm; against the Ritz it is considerably less of a museum.

• From about $1,450 a night in shoulder season
• Official Palace distinction, Rosewood, reopened July 2017 after four years
• Eighteenth century Gabriel palace on Place de la Concorde, hotel since 1909
• Two Grands Appartements designed by Karl Lagerfeld
• L'Écrin holds one Michelin star, Les Ambassadeurs is now the bar
• Sixteen metre underground pool with a Sense spa

Of the ten Palace hotels in Paris, this is the one that reads as contemporary. It opened in 2011 behind an art deco facade on the Rue Saint-Honoré, and the whole building turns inward onto a planted courtyard garden with floor to ceiling glass on every side. Condé Nast's reviewer called the effect being transported out of Paris into a more contemporary city where the past is not brandished as a selling point, and that is exactly the appeal.

Rooms are the practical win. Standard categories here are among the largest in the first arrondissement, the bathrooms are properly generous, and the technology works, which is not universally true in this price band. The spa runs to 900 square metres over two floors with a vitality pool, and it keeps longer hours than most of the Palace competition, which matters if you land at seven in the morning off a red eye.

Sur Mesure was the two star room and the group has continued to invest heavily in the food and beverage floor; the courtyard restaurant is the booking to make in warm weather, and Cake Shop does the best hotel pastry counter on this side of the river. The shopping is the other reason to be here: Saint-Honoré, Vendôme and the Tuileries are all within four minutes of the door.

• From about $1,300 a night, strong value for a Palace in the 1st
• Official Palace distinction, opened 2011 behind a 1930s facade
• Among the largest standard rooms of any hotel in the 1st arrondissement
• Nine hundred square metre spa over two floors with a vitality pool
• Planted inner courtyard garden with year round dining
• Four minutes to Place Vendôme, six to the Tuileries

This is the entry in the guide that saves you a thousand dollars a night without moving you out of the eighth arrondissement. Hôtel de Berri sits on a quiet street between the Champs-Élysées and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, in a townhouse with a walled garden, and it runs 75 keys full of genuine antiques and commissioned art rather than hotel furniture.

It is not a Palace and it does not pretend to be one. There is no three star restaurant, the spa is small and the lobby will not stop anyone in their tracks. What there is: rooms that are decorated with actual taste, a garden you can eat breakfast in, and a location that puts you four minutes from George V and Avenue Montaigne while paying roughly a third of what they charge.

It is also the only hotel in this guide where Marriott Bonvoy points do serious work. Award nights here regularly land at a fraction of the cash rate in shoulder season, and Luxury Collection benefits still include a proper breakfast for Platinum members. If you have been sitting on a points balance waiting for the right redemption in Europe, this is the one I would spend it on.

• From about $700 a night, less than half the Palace average
• Marriott Luxury Collection, so Bonvoy points and elite benefits apply
• Seventy five rooms in a townhouse with a private walled garden
• Furnished with real antiques and commissioned contemporary art
• Four minutes to the Champs-Élysées, six to Avenue Montaigne
• Several rooms have private garden terraces, unusual at this rate