Hotel Dame des Arts, hotel review - avoid Paris Syndrome with a stay at this Rive Gauche four-star destination

It’s situated in the Left Bank’s Quartier Latin

A bedroom at the Hotel Dame des Arts Pic: Ludovic Balay

I only find myself in Paris about once a decade.

I first went aged 16, and stayed in a real dive hotel in Montmartre.

In my early twenties, I visited on a budget coach tour. Then, around 10 years ago, I stayed somewhere a bit smarter, because I felt like a proper grown-up and I’d started to care about comfy beds and where to get breakfast.

Facade of the Hotel Dame des Arts Pic: Ludovic Balay

Now that I’m in my late forties, accommodation has become even more important.

I want comfort, convenience, style, and preferably somewhere that’ll ensure that we dodge Paris Syndrome - the sense that the city doesn’t match up to the romantic expectation.

Thankfully, the Hotel Dame des Arts has all of that, with a cerise on top.

The four-star venue, which was designed by Maison&Objet Designer of the Year for 2023, Raphael Navot, only opened in February last year, and has 109 bedrooms and suites, plus a rooftop bar with 360 degree views. Sadly, on our chilly winter visit, that vantage point was shut for the season until spring. However, there are plenty of other interior spaces to drool over.

The restaurant at Hotel Dame des Arts Pic: Ludovic Balay

We were wowed before we stepped inside the Fifties building, with its rather cool reeded glass sliding door. Inside, the palette is espresso and cafe creme, with black oak floors and softly rounded edges everywhere.

It’s all very low lit, which made me reach for my reading glasses but also felt blissfully cosseting, after a day of buzzing on foot from the nearby creperie, to the chic shops of St Germain, then Musée D’Orsay, Centre Pompidou, chai latte and back again.

Down in the basement, there’s a smart looking cavern of a gym, with a display of leather boxing gloves, as well as a treatment room, and a bookable sauna, which would be pleasant after a long flight, or even our 110-minute easyJet Edinburgh to Charles de Gaulle airport one.

Upstairs and our Signature Room is bijoux, but still feels very special, thanks to the considered design and individual artworks, which include some intriguing photographs and prints.

Apparently, over a third of the rooms have balconies and some of these have views to the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur.

Everything in the bedroom seems to echo the vertical folds in the chocolate-hued curtains, which you can peep through to spy on traditional apartments, including a few with bikes slotted onto their fifth floor balconies. Our walls are covered in a reeded oak, using a method they call ‘demi cylindre’, and the bathrooms, separated by a Japanese style sliding door and with walk-in showers and Diptyque products, have padded effect tiles. I want to stroke everything.

The bed is a super king, so my six-foot-something husband doesn’t have to sleep with his toes peeking out the end.

Also, there are hardback design books scattered around the room, so we can pretend we’re more cerebral than we are. This is the sort of place you’d stay if you were an architect, who wore excellent glasses. We do see one or two of those types in the lift, as we descend for dinner.

Their restaurant, where the head chef is Othoniel Alvarez Castaneda, is open to the reception and adjoins a leafy outdoor courtyard.

We’re seated inside, on a burgundy-coloured sofa, and there’s a copy of Françoise Sagan’s Le Garde du Coeur on a shelf above my head.

Unusually, the menu has Mexican and Japanese twists, with dishes including Brittany oysters with spicy chilli oil and yuzu kosho seasoning. That theme is carried through to breakfast, when you’ll get goodies like huevos rancheros, alongside the croissants, superfood smoothie, fruit and continental offerings.

As we’d been in full tourist mode earlier and had visited a branch of the restaurant Bouillon Chartier, which is as traditionally old-school Gallic as can be, we didn’t mind ordering something more global for dinner. Along with a tequila-based Uno Mas cocktail and a mezcal and rum mixture that is the Leche de Tigres, we ate beef tataki, tostadas and trios of pork and pineapple tacos, all followed by buñuelos - a traditional Mexican fritter served with dulce de leche and croissant ice-cream.

If I’d still been in my twenties, that dessert may have fuelled a night of partying. This hotel would’ve still worked perfectly for that, since check out isn’t until noon. Instead, we retreat to our boudoir for an early night.

This is Paris in my forties, and surely the best and most comfortable trip yet.

Hotel Dame des Arts, 4 Rue Danton, Paris (www.damedesarts.com). Room rates start from £280 a night.