Hotel Les Bains

Hotel Les Bains

The black-and-white checkerboard dancefloor that Philippe Starck designed for Les Bains Douches once drew Andy Warhol, Grace Jones and Mick Jagger through the doors of a building that started, in 1885, as the Guerbois family's private thermal baths, the most celebrated in Paris. By 1978 it was the world's most talked-about nightclub, hosting Depeche Mode and Joy Division while Karl Lagerfeld and Jean-Paul Gaultier watched from the crowd. In 2011, Jean Pierre Marois's La Société des Bains reopened the address as a 39-room hotel across five floors, keeping the club running below rooms decorated by Tristan Auer in precious wood, velvet and white marble, with a carpet that nods to Gainsbourg and a sofa modelled on the Warhol years. Some rooms keep their hammams and outdoor showers; others open onto south-facing balconies, up through the penthouse suite. Downstairs, Roxo serves breakfast through late-night cocktails between two planted patios under bordeaux lacquer, open daily from seven until midnight, with DJs taking over Thursday through Saturday. The Bains Guerbois spa, tucked into what feels like a private apartment, pairs massages scented with three house fragrances against a vitality pool with counter-current jets and a hammam. On Sunday mornings the club's dancefloor becomes a yoga studio, hip-hop beats replacing the DJ sets. The hotel sits a short walk from Rue Tiquetonne and Étienne Marcel, close enough to the centre to explore on foot. The club still runs three nights a week, so this suits guests wanting Paris's real nightlife history under the same roof, not those after a quiet night in the third arrondissement. Few hotels can say a Prince concert once shook their walls the night before breakfast service began. Hotel Les Bains occupies the building that once housed Paris's most infamous nightclub, where Warhol, Bowie and Prince made history; the club still runs Thursday to Saturday. Its 39 rooms sit steps from Étienne Marcel, with a hidden spa and a bordeaux-lacquered restaurant-bar open from breakfast to midnight.