Maison Breguet

Maison Breguet

Most people default to the 6th or the Marais when they book Paris, which is understandable and also means they end up somewhere very beautiful and very full of other tourists doing the same thing. The 11th is where a lot of Parisians who care about food and design actually live, a neighbourhood of excellent restaurants, natural wine bars, Saturday morning markets, and streets that have not yet been entirely optimised for visitors. Maison Bréguet is on a quiet side street here, two minutes from the Bréguet-Sabin metro and ten minutes' walk from the Marais, and it is the kind of hotel that makes you feel immediately like you are doing Paris just that little bit differently. The building was a washing machine factory, and the conversion, done by London studio Sagrada, has kept enough of the industrial bones to give the place genuine character: a glass-roofed restaurant with vaulted steel ceilings, an open kitchen, a patio enclosed by living plant walls that is a genuine rarity in central Paris. The 50 rooms have hardwood floors, Pierre Frey wallpaper, Carrara marble bathrooms, Maison Margiela toiletries, and, if you look carefully at the ceiling, a hidden map of Paris painted by the designer. The standard rooms are compact in the way that Paris rooms always are, so it is worth going up a category to a Deluxe or Junior Suite, which are bright and considerably more generous. The three-bedroom private house with its own garden, bookable as a unit, is one of the better-kept secrets for a group or a family who want the hotel facilities without the hotel feeling. Downstairs, the basement spa has a pool, hammam, and sauna, which sounds like a minor detail and becomes considerably more important after two days of walking. The restaurant is where the hotel earns its neighbourhood credentials: it is genuinely popular with locals, busy on weekday evenings, and good enough that you would go even if you were not staying there. The short version: A converted washing machine factory in the 11th arrondissement, with 50 design-forward rooms, a glass-roofed restaurant that locals actually use, a basement spa with a pool, and a location that puts you inside Paris rather than on top of the tourist version of it.