Best design hotel in Montparnasse Paris

What does The Times think of Hotel des Academies et des Arts Paris?

By George Sivell, The Times Online

“I have never been trusted with a work of art before, let alone slept with one, but that is what happened to me in Paris.
The place – Montparnasse, and the Hotel des Academies et des Arts, a new boutique hotel in rue de la Grande Chaumiere. The street is famously intertwined with the threads of French art history winding back to the French Revolution. Surrounding houses were home to Paul Gauguin and Amedeo Modigliani.Hotel des Academies et des Arts is a 150 year old town house converted from a one-star hotel by its current owners Laurent Inchauspé and his wife Charlotte, who have lovingly maintained the area’s artistic tradition.

The art – delivered in each of 20 beautiful rooms at Hotel des Academies et des Arts Paris by one-time street artist Jerome Mesnager, known for his characteristic black and white silhouette paintings of human bodies on walls and open spaces around the world. Sophie de Watrigant, the French sculptress, has furnished the hotel with numerous white figures, invariably climbing model ladders.

Her most spectacular work “joins” the basement to the fifth floor of the hotel in the vortex of the spiral staircase. The lift offers a progressive view of a giant Mesnager sretching a similar distance at Hotel des Academies et des Arts Paris.

Rooms at Hotel des Academies come in one of four themes which can be specified on reservation. I soaked up the ambience in a Man Ray room, with a black and white interior styled in tribute to the famous photographer, but would recommend any of the alternative themes available. Parisienne represents classic French city living in cream and taupe, Comedienne, as the French word for actor/actress implies, invokes the red of French theatre, and La Ruhlmann where the rooms were inspired by the luxurious textiles used by one of the most famous French art deco designers.

Cost per double room is from €210 to €270, which seems to me to be good value for a boutique hotel in the Paris arrondissements, especially a trendy one, such as the sixth. Also some very interesting extras. The hotels offers a range of cultural visits in addition to seeing the studios used by Jerome Mesnager or Sophie de Watrigant. A personal shopper can be hired for a half day tour of the deluxe boutiques in the sixth arrondissement or a full day shopping trip which combines, compares and contrasts the best of the sixth arrondissement with the delights of the Palais Royal area in the deluxe right bank first and second arrondissements.

The surrounding area of the Hotel des Academies et des Arts is classic Left Bank Paris. It is near a quiet, less frequented corner of famous Jardins de Luxembourg. Stepping out of the hotel in the other direction gets you onto what is now known as the Place Pablo Picasso, the junction of Boulevard Montparnasse and Boulevard Raspail. From there, and in all too brief a time, I squeezed in a walk to the fascinating Jardin Atlantique, an oasis of deliberately wild garden built behind the Gare Montparnasse, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Montparnasse Cemetry and the Fondation Cartier. “

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