Mandarin Oriental Paris

Luxury-hotel junkies were licking their chops for ages before this one opened. Paris is a city that’s no stranger to high-end luxury hospitality, and it was long clear that a Mandarin Oriental would have to be something special, even by the company’s lofty standards, if it was going to make a dent here. And when it was revealed that its location would be on the rue Saint-Honoré, in the heart of the luxury shopping district just north of the Louvre, the anticipation turned to frenzy.

Suffice it to say that the real thing, once it opened, didn’t disappoint — and isn’t likely to start disappointing any time soon. This is the rarest of things in Paris, a contemporary-style hotel building, and not an unstylish one, as a dream team of architects and designers was assembled and tasked with creating an environment that’s suitably modern yet still suitably Parisian, with a healthy dose of Art Deco influence, a tribute to the building’s historic roots.

Once inside, you’ll find the 99 rooms to be chic and solidly constructed — it’s clear no expense was spared anywhere in the building. Bathrooms, increasingly, are where luxury hotel rooms are made, and these ones are huge and lavish, almost, but not quite, rendering the spa redundant. And the 39 suites, in ten different styles, range from merely extravagant to shockingly opulent.

The bottom line: just about faultless, if you’re in the market for faultless. (This applies to the restaurants as well, which include the two-Michelin-starred Sur Mesure by Thierry Marx.) The Mandarin Oriental Paris joins a very short list of hotels where, as long as you’re not counting your pennies, you’re virtually guaranteed to come away impressed. And if it’s got an edge on any of the others, it’s in the location, which is a shopper’s dream, and yards away (well, hundreds) from the Louvre and the Opéra Garnier.