Grands Boulevards Experimental – a secret garden off the boulevard

Down a passageway off Boulevard Poissonnière, past a gate that gives no hint of what lies behind it, stands one of only two buildings on this stretch of the Grands Boulevards still set back from the street. Grands Boulevards Experimental occupies an hôtel particulier raised just before the French Revolution on the foundations of an old garden, and that history – aristocratic, slightly mischievous, never literal – runs through every room designer Dorothée Meilichzon has touched. Fifty bedrooms and suites sit above a restaurant beneath a towering glass roof, where chef Giovanni Passerini cooks French-Italian country food with a fine-dining edge, and two cocktail bars: one a shell-lined hideaway for winter, the other a rooftop open to the Paris sky. The MICHELIN Guide recognises the hotel with One Key, calling it a very special stay. For a traveller who wants the 2nd arrondissement's theatres, cafés and Bourse crowd on the doorstep but total quiet behind the gate, this is the address.

01The house

The building itself is the story. The Grands Boulevards Experimental is steeped in a rich historical narrative that dates back to just before the French Revolution (1789), erected on the foundation of an old garden. The building has seen a fascinating evolution over the centuries. Initially serving as offices and bourgeois apartments, it mirrored the grandeur and architectural elegance of early 20th-century Paris. In the 1920s, the building embraced cinematic culture, transforming into a cinema giving rise to the creation of its expansive patio.

In its current iteration as a 4-star boutique hotel, Grands Boulevards Experimental opened in 2018 and unique among its peers, it is the second and last building along the boulevard to be set back from the main street, thus offering a sense of entering a tranquil sanctuary, a peaceful retreat in the centre of Paris. Designer Dorothée Meilichzon, the talent behind several Experimental Group addresses, took the building's own history as her brief rather than falling back on costume-drama cliché. "We used a lot of elements popular during the age of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette," she has said of the project, and the scale of the undertaking was considerable: "We bought 2.5 kilometers of fabric for the entire hotel!" recalls Meilichzon. "We have five-meter ceilings on the first floor, so it required a lot of fabric for my full-height baldaquin."

02Rooms and suites

The fifty rooms climb through the old building on four floors, each one individually dressed rather than issued from a template. Each of the 50 guest rooms has lime plaster walls and custom-dyed linen draperies: materials and colors that reference the late 18th century and Marie Antoinette's high-low tastes in particular. The smallest, the Petit Boulevard Single, is built for one traveller with a four-poster bed and courtyard views, while the Petit Boulevard Balcony adds doors onto the garden terrace across its 14 square metres.

Insider tip

Enter via the passageway off Boulevard Poissonnière; the Grands Boulevards métro is two minutes away.

Mid-sized rooms take their names from the surrounding streets: the 18-square-metre Saint Fiacre, named for the nearby rue, and the 21-square-metre Uzes, which looks down onto the boulevard itself. At the top of the house, Parisian Eaves tucks a king bed and a bathtub for two beneath the sloped roofline across 23 square metres, while the Grand Boulevard suite, the largest at 32 square metres, adds a sofa and street views over the Grands Boulevards. Every designer has a favourite detail, and for Meilichzon it is the baldaquin beds. 'They are light thanks to the linen, but they make the rooms feel sheltered and unique.'

03Where to eat

The hotel's restaurant sits under a towering glass roof with Giovanni Passerini at the helm, revisiting the great classics of French-Italian country cooking with fine-dining tendencies. Guests eat in what was once the building's garden, now a landscaped courtyard with a bar at its centre, and in the warmer months the roof itself retracts. Downstairs, a meal with friends beneath an open roof offers the caress of summer's breeze, and a weekend brunch nods to the nostalgia of trips to New York.

04The bars

Two bars answer to the seasons. The hotel has two bars: The Shell, an intimate cocktail bar open from October to March, Monday to Saturday (closed Sundays), and The Shed, the rooftop bar, open daily. The Shell takes its cue from an unlikely source: a shell-encrusted cottage in the grounds of the Château de Rambouillet, decorated with thousands of shells, streaks of marble and mother-of-pearl, which inspired Meilichzon in her work on the hotel's bar. The chairs here are 1960s designs by Italian architect Eugenio Gerli, upholstered in a flame stitch and carmine-red velvet.

On the roof, The Shed stays open whatever the weather. It offers sweeping views over Parisian roofs, open all year round. It welcomes guests daily from 5pm to 11pm, with the kitchen open from 5pm to 10.30pm. As with other touches throughout the hotel, the drinks list here is divided into different alcohol strengths rather than the usual classic-versus-signature split, a small, practical piece of Experimental Group thinking.

05The neighbourhood

The address sits at the point where the 2nd and 9th arrondissements meet, in an area built for wandering rather than sightseeing lists. The hotel is just a stone's throw from some of Paris' most iconic landmarks including Opéra Garnier, Palais Royal and the charm of the Marais. Closer still, the old Bourse district carries its own literary weight: the hotel's own notes point to the Bourse cherished by the Surrealists, the theatres of the Faubourg Montmartre, the restaurants of the Faubourg Poissonnière, and the streets of Strasbourg Saint-Denis that never sleep. A few steps away, Le Grand Rex, an icon of Art Deco cinema architecture, marks the boulevard. The Grands Boulevards métro station lies a couple of minutes' walk from the door, and the Grands Magasins of the Opéra quarter are a fifteen-minute walk, the Tuileries Gardens twenty.

06Making the most of a stay

Beyond a room and a table, the hotel rents out its ground floor for private occasions. The restaurant, set back from the Grands Boulevards and built on the foundation of what was once a garden, can seat 60 for dinner, or host 150 to 180 guests for cocktail receptions across the ground floor spaces, with 120 guests in La Verrière and the Shell bar combined. The rooftop Shed takes up to 55 standing for a party under the awnings, while the hidden Shell bar suits a more intimate 30. A boardroom with an oval wooden table seats up to eighteen for meetings in daylight rather than a windowless function room – one more sign that even the hotel's working spaces were designed to feel like someone's own house.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.