Auberge du Jeu de Paume – named for a prince's vanished tennis court

At the edge of the Domaine de Chantilly, between the Château's lawns and the eighteenth-century Grandes Écuries, Auberge du Jeu de Paume takes its name from a building rather than a view. Next door stands the royal real-tennis court that Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, one of the finest amateur players of his age, commissioned in 1757, its façade carved by the silversmith Cousinet. The game fell from fashion, the court became a nineteenth-century gallery for monumental paintings, and it still stands beside the hotel today, under careful restoration. The hotel itself opened in 2012, a Relais & Châteaux address and part of the SANA Luxury Edition group, and the MICHELIN Guide now awards it One Key. Inside its 92 rooms and suites, two restaurants, a firelit Lounge Bar and a 600-square-metre Valmont Spa make up a programme built for people who come to Chantilly for horses, old masters and the particular quiet of a 7,800-hectare estate forty kilometres north of Paris.

01The house

In the sixteenth century jeu de paume, the hand-and-racquet forerunner of tennis, was a craze among royalty and commoners alike, and it was in this spirit that Louis Joseph de Bourbon, one of the top fifty amateur players of his day, commissioned the construction of the Chantilly Jeu de Paume in 1757, its sculpted façade decorations the work of the silversmith Cousinet. The game eventually died out, and in the nineteenth century the court was turned into an exhibition hall, its vast volume suited to monumental paintings, before falling empty; the building still stands beside the hotel, undergoing careful restoration, a genuine piece of the Auberge's biography rather than scenery.

The hotel that borrowed its name opened in 2012 inside the Domaine de Chantilly, between the Château's gardens and the Grandes Écuries, and belongs to Relais & Châteaux and the SANA Luxury Edition group. The MICHELIN Guide has awarded it One Key for a second consecutive year, recognising a stay built around discretion rather than spectacle.

02Rooms and suites

The 92 rooms and suites run across ten categories, from Deluxe and Premium rooms to Premium Park View and Prestige Terrace rooms, and on into Junior, Premium and Prestige Terrace suites, an Executive and a Presidential Suite, and the six-person Arc de Triomphe Suite at the top of the range. Twenty-five of the ninety-two keys are suites. Interiors favour Louis XV armchairs, toile de Jouy fabrics and generous draperies, a decorative language kept deliberately consistent across the house. One of the hotel's two main façades, part of it listed as a historic construction, looks directly onto the Château's grounds and the Fountain of Beauvais, a position several of the terrace rooms and suites put to use for private outdoor dining.

Insider tip

25 minutes from Paris by train via Gare du Nord; 25 minutes from Charles de Gaulle airport.

03Where to eat

Le Jardin d'Hiver is the bistro chic of the house, its seasonal, produce-led cooking built around the authenticity of ingredients and unexpected pairings under chef Clément Le Norcy. The dining room and terrace look out over the gardens of the Domaine de Chantilly, a setting deliberately kept simple so the plate does the talking.

La Table du Connétable, the hotel's gourmet restaurant, is run by the same chef and opens onto the lawns of the Château de Chantilly, its windows framing the gardens and the Fountain of Beauvais beyond. Dinner is served Wednesday to Saturday from 7pm to 9.30pm, formal dress is requested, and the room closes for a fortnight each January and for several weeks in high summer.

04The bar

The Lounge Bar is built around libraries and an open fire, a deliberately clubby counterpoint to the formality of the restaurants next door, suited equally to a pre-dinner drink or a late one after a long walk through the park.

05Spa and wellbeing

Spa Valmont occupies 600 square metres at the heart of the estate, its Moorish-inspired openings giving onto a relaxation pool, whirlpool, steam room and sauna, alongside a spa shop and juice bar. The pool itself measures eight by three metres with a maximum depth of 1.4 metres, and the house runs five treatment rooms, including one for couples, plus a fitness centre, with the spa open from 7am to 10pm daily.

Two treatments were created exclusively for the Auberge, drawing on the history of Chantilly: the Mille et Une Chantilly and the Cavaliers. The house's own signature, Le Soin Cavalier, was devised by Valmont specifically to ease tension after a morning on horseback, a nod to the estate's equestrian life just outside the door.

06The neighbourhood

The Domaine de Chantilly spreads across 7,800 hectares, and the Château's Condé Museum alone holds 1,000 paintings, 5,000 drawings and engravings, and 3,000 works in its library, a roll call running from Raphaël and Poussin to Delacroix, Ingres and Watteau. A short walk away, the Grandes Écuries, designed by the architect Jean Aubert and built between 1719 and 1740, once stabled 240 horses and 500 hounds beneath a 28-metre dome and now house the Living Horse Museum. The racecourse below, tracked out since 1834, stages the Grand Prix de Diane and the Grand Prix du Jockey Club each June, while the early seventeenth-century Maison de Sylvie and the thatched Hameau of 1774, said to have inspired Marie-Antoinette's hamlet at the Petit Trianon, sit further into the park.

07Making the most of a stay

Breakfast is a buffet of home-made, gourmet products served from 7am to 10am on weekdays and 7.30am to 10.30am at weekends, with a supplement for taking it in the room. A Clefs d'Or concierge arranges cultural visits, cycling and horse-riding, a small boutique in the lobby sells Chantilly porcelain and books on the estate's history, and room service runs around the clock, including dinner on a suite terrace overlooking the park on warm evenings. Chantilly is roughly twenty-five minutes from Charles de Gaulle airport and a similar distance from central Paris by train via Gare du Nord, making a stay easy to combine with a day in the capital.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.