L'Hotel

L'Hotel is the plainest name this building has had. It went up in 1828, and from 1868 it was the Hotel d'Allemagne. After the war of 1870 it was the Hotel d'Alsace. Oscar Wilde moved in at the end of the century and left only when he died, in 1900. After a refurbishment in 1967 came Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and Jim Morrison. Jacques Garcia has since given each of the twenty bedrooms its own design, off a spiral staircase whose well drops past gilded Greek key and red marble to a black star set in the floor. Upstairs it is silk and deep colour: a mirrored bed in the Mistinguett room, and in L'Apartment, the largest at 45 square metres, heavy red velvet and a terrace over the roofs to the bell tower of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Recommended for couples who want Saint-Germain at the door and more theatre than square metres: no room takes more than two, and the Mignons have 17 apiece. The rue des Beaux-Arts is a short street of galleries, and the Pont des Arts, a few minutes on, crosses the Seine to the Louvre. What a Mignon lacks in floor it makes up for below: an hour's private use of the vaults, the candlelit pool and the steam room, booked at reception for any time from eight in the morning to half past nine at night. Wilde's Lounge, in the Empire style on the ground floor, pours its cocktails from five, each made with spirits from its own country. The Oscar Wilde Suite has a large private terrace, for a guest of the simplest taste, always satisfied with the best.