J.K. Place Paris

JK Place, the Italian group, spent five years looking for a house in Paris. Its first outside Italy is a former consulate on the rue de Lille, a block back from the Seine, which Michele Bönan has fitted out as a private mansion of 29 rooms. A glazed corridor runs beside the courtyard over a chequerboard floor, past stone busts on wooden stands. A stone staircase curls up under round windows, with a red leather wingback, worn soft, waiting at the bottom. In the J.K. Master the walls are panelled in white and the four-poster is hung in cream, with a purple velvet daybed across its foot, so there is somewhere to sit down on the way to bed.

Recommended for a Paris spent on foot, and for families as much as couples: there is a children's menu, and the J.K. Junior rooms look onto a garden. The Musée d'Orsay is four minutes' walk away and Saint-Germain-des-Prés not much further. Rue du Bac runs south past Jacques Genin's chocolates to Le Bon Marché, which can take most of an afternoon. Back on the rue de Lille, the spa is underground with a heated pool, and the bar is behind a pair of black chinoiserie doors, its counter striped in gold and brown. The restaurant is Casa Tua's: home-style Italian under a glass roof or out on the leafy patio, with focaccia made in the house every day. Casa Tua began in Miami and this is its first outpost in Europe, though the cotoletta alla Milanese has had the shorter journey.