A night in the Cinquième Dimension
The Hôtel des Grandes Écoles is for people who believe that romance blossoms against a backdrop of medieval history, with a whiff of literature and maybe even a touch of Latin. The hotel is in the 5th arrondissement, just behind the Panthéon and a stroll away from the Sorbonne and the École Polytechnique. James Joyce once lived next door, and Ernest Hemingway used to drink and write (probably in that order) in the nearby place de la Contrescarpe.
The hotel is set in a courtyard so long and deep it almost amounts to a private road—no danger of clattering binmen at dawn. It’s a very rare location in the dense old city centre. As you wander in from the street (the rue du Cardinal Lemoine), you see a low pinkish building that looks like a country house imagined by Renoir. The cobbled entrance opens out to reveal a walled garden, where a second, matching pink house appears amongst the trees.
The hotel (three buildings in all) used to be a pension de famille, a lodging house providing term-time accommodation for students and teachers at the Sorbonne and the Polytechnique. They were all evicted when the owners sold up in 1964, and the place was converted into a hotel.
Today, it is a real family affair (the owners live in situ), and feels like a country inn. The furniture is a warm, wooden hotchpotch of new and Louis-Philippe style, the wallpaper is somehow tastefully riotous—in one wing, the rooms are papered with Toile de Jouy, a traditional style of wallpaper, here with illustrations of an early balloon ride over a rustic scene. The story ends badly, with the balloon punctured and some yokels poking at the rip in the fabric, but this shouldn’t spoil the romantic mood, because the hotel possesses all the ingredients for a sublimely peaceful lovers’ weekend.
The rooms all look out on to the cobbled private lane or the walled garden, so opening the windows should bring you nothing more stressful than birdsong and rustling leaves. You can even ask for a top-floor garret room if you need to get that impoverished young-Hemingway-in-Paris feel (though he probably didn’t have a fitted bathroom).
And there are three other things about the hotel that ought to guarantee a romantic Paris experience. First, there is no air-conditioning, which not only limits the noise, it also reduces the number of aircon-loving guests who shout all the time because they’re used to conducting conversations against a backing track of rattling machinery.
Second, and most importantly for people who have come to Paris to get away from it all rather than to see as many portraits of Louis XIV as possible, breakfast is served, either in the dining room, the garden or in bed, until midday—paradise for those with an early-morning appetite for something more than a croissant.
And finally, for couples who are at a stage in their relationship where it is better to avoid all possible sources of argument, there are no TVs in the bedrooms. This is wonderful news, not only because French TV is generally abysmal, but also because it means that there is no danger of the day ending in a decidedly unromantic argument.
Readers will probably recognize the male and female voices in the following bedtime dialogue:
‘Big European match tonight, darling, mind if I just watch the football highlights before …’
‘Before what?’
‘Uh? Where’s the remote control?’
‘I said: before what?’
‘Oh, yes. Well, before, you know, darling …’
‘Before you fall asleep snoring and I have to switch the TV off for you?’
‘No, dear, we’re in Paris for a romantic weekend, so naturally …’
‘… you’re going to spend it watching Real Madrid play the Harlem Globetrotters?’
‘No, darling, the Harlem Globetrotters are a basketball team—oh I get it, you were joking.’
‘And so are you if you think anything remotely sexual is going to happen after you’ve spent half an hour watching football.’
‘Five minutes, no more, I promise … er, darling, why are you putting on that pair of thick pyjamas?’
Yes, some TV remote controls might look like sex toys, but they can kill your love life stone dead.
Royale romance
Pigalle is a lot less sedate than the Latin Quarter, but somehow it can actually feel romantic to stroll past the massage parlours and girlie bars with your loved one, thinking how great it is that you don’t need to descend to drinking fake Champagne with a girl who’d prefer to be at home in the Ukraine studying to become an architect.
The Villa Royale is right at the steamy hub of Pigalle—the hotel overlooks the semicircular place Pigalle with its Théâtre X and its Ciné X. A few yards away is a street of girlie bars with names like Les 3 Roses, Soho Bar and (this is no joke) Dirty Dick.*********
The hotel is not exactly secluded—it’s for lovers who want to be in the thick of the city—but the rooms on the higher floors only let in the noise like a backing track to the Parisian romantic comedy you’re creating.
Appropriately, the Villa Royale goes for the boudoir look. The décor is all gold and red velvet, a sort of Moroccan baroque, which is actually a good description of French Romantic art, and the tented lobby wouldn’t be a bad setting for one of Delacroix’s orientalist paintings.
The rooms don’t have numbers, and are named after famous people, most—but not all—of them French. Guests can opt for someone classical, like Debussy, Bizet, Victor Hugo and Renoir, or quintessentially Parisian like Édith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier and Serge Gainsbourg. You can even boast that you’ve been in Catherine Deneuve’s bedroom, and not many men can say that nowadays. (You can also overnight in Madonna’s—no comment.)
Not that the rooms necessarily reflect the artists they’re named after—the chambre Édith Piaf doesn’t have a tiny bed, for example, and the Gainsbourg doesn’t smell of cigarettes. They’re all snugly perfect for a winter hideaway, with plush wallpaper, gothic lamps, sheeny curtains and kitsch
