All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission. For a long time I kept a secret guiltily. Not a guilty secret but a secret I felt guilty about keeping. It was cheap and shabby but inexpressibly glamorous — a remnant of an elegantly careworn Paris that has, in the course of my own lifetime, been either polished beyond recognition or dissolved in a fast-flowing, irresistible current of money. The Henri IV was sold some years ago.
And in truth it was probably never quite as squishily ripe with promise as I remember it to have been. The good ones are more than the sum of their parts, even when the parts are heavenly.
The really curious thing is that, however many Henri IVs the city loses, it always seems, year after year, to gain even more of them. When choosing hotels, our editors consider both luxury properties and boutique and lesser-known boltholes that offer an authentic and insider experience of a destination. We update this list regularly as new hotels open and existing ones evolve.
Find out more about our editorial standards and how we review hotels. Featured in our Gold List of the best hotels in the world It was the first hotel in Paris with telephones, the first to offer private baths, and the first to install electricity throughout the property. Meanwhile, down a warmly lit hall is Bar Hemingway, named for the American novelist who scrimped for a cocktail a week at The Ritz.
Jo Rodgers. Featured in our Hot List of the best new hotels in the world A bijou indoor pool, a rarity in central Paris, is overlooked by a free-form forest mural by in-demand artist Jacques Merle, and the hammam and spa specialise in extra-speedy treatments. Viv Groksop.
