Le Ballu – Tintin's Syldavia reborn in the 9th arrondissement

On a quiet street behind Place de Clichy, in the 9th arrondissement's Nouvelle Athènes quarter, Le Ballu occupies two adjoining 19th-century mansions that have lived several lives before this one: artist's residence, music-industry office, squat, and now a five-star hotel built entirely on its owners' imagination. Architect Thomas Vidalenc and his wife, hotelière Julia Vidalenc, designed every room themselves, borrowing the visual codes of Hergé's Tintin albums — specifically the fictional Balkan kingdom of Syldavia from King Ottokar's Sceptre — and splicing them with the concrete optimism of 1960s Eastern Europe. The MICHELIN Guide gives it One Key, a recognition of just how singular the result is: 37 rooms that share no common template, a restaurant that runs continuously from noon to eleven at night, and a basement pool tiled like a Soviet-era bathhouse that guests can reserve entirely for themselves. Nothing here was bought off a catalogue; everything was invented on site.

01The house

The hotel's oldest fabric dates back to a private mansion raised by the painter Charles Wislin near Place Blanche, a building later converted into offices for SACEM, the French society of composers and music publishers, before being squatted for a time by the arts collective Consulat. Behind its brick and cut-stone double façade, the structure sits at the edge of Nouvelle Athènes, a 9th-arrondissement district shaped by the nineteenth-century artistic elite who gave the quarter its name.

It was Thomas and Julia Vidalenc, running the project as both architects and hoteliers, who rebuilt the 2,000-square-metre property from the ground up, completing it in 2019. Rather than smooth over the building's patchwork history, they let the mix of eras stay legible, describing the result as a world almost impossible to date precisely, and filling it with a collection of 1960s and 1970s furniture by Slovenian, Czech, Polish and Bosnian designers that reads as though assembled gradually over decades rather than installed all at once.

02Rooms and suites

The 37 rooms climb from an 18-square-metre Standard Double with an Italian shower and street view, through Superior and Deluxe categories with garden outlooks, to Junior Suites with bathtubs and, in some cases, private terraces. At the top sit 47-square-metre Apartments composed of a bedroom and separate living room, some with their own terrace, and a 50-square-metre Communicating configuration that sleeps up to six — useful for families taking two linked rooms.

Insider tip

Five minutes' walk from the Moulin Rouge, around fifteen from Sacré-Cœur.

Every category comes with air conditioning, soundproofing, a kitchenette with Nespresso machine and crockery, and a minibar stocked with drinks and snacks. The decorative language throughout draws on the clean, pencil-ruled lines Vidalenc associates with vintage comic-strip artwork, paired with pieces such as the Fox Club armchairs and 366 Junior chairs designed by the Polish furniture designer Józef Chierowski, and paintings by the Polish artist Tauba Sarnaka hung against white matte marble and terrazzo.

03Where to eat

Le Ballu's restaurant runs continuous service from midday to 11pm, built around a simple, seasonal menu the house calls Tradition Revisited — food meant as much for a solo lunch at the bar as for a proper dinner. Vidalenc designed the dining room, with 90 covers between the indoor space and garden, as a deliberate collision of Art Deco restraint and Eastern Bloc colour, the same aesthetic world as the rest of the hotel.

Breakfast is served from 7.30am to 10.30am on weekdays and until 11am at weekends, and the restaurant also keeps a seasonal Sunday brunch, bookable like any other table.

04The bar

The social heart of the hotel sits between a retro library lounge and a small cocktail bar, furnished with the same vintage Eastern European pieces as the rooms and kept moving by a curated vinyl soundtrack rather than a playlist. For private gatherings or work meetings, Le Ballu also holds a lounge for up to 12 people, equipped with a projector, flat screen and conference telephone.

05Pool and wellbeing

Downstairs, an 8-by-2-metre indoor heated pool and sauna are open from 7am to 10.45pm, with a 45-minute privatisation included for guests — a rare offer at this scale of hotel. The room is styled after a 1960s Russian bathhouse, lined in metro tiling and lit by globe pendants, a theatrical, slightly severe counterpoint to the colour upstairs. Massage treatments can be booked on request.

Pets are welcome throughout the hotel for a nightly supplement of 20 euros, and two of the 37 rooms are adapted for guests with reduced mobility.

06The neighbourhood

Rue Ballu sits in a part of the 9th arrondissement that has shifted in recent years from a workaday junction around Place de Clichy into one of Paris's livelier restaurant-and-bar stretches, without losing the quiet of its own residential streets. The hotel is a short walk from the cabarets and cocktail bars of Pigalle, roughly five minutes from the Moulin Rouge, and about fifteen minutes on foot from the Sacré-Cœur and Montmartre above it. Place de Clichy metro station is the nearest stop, putting the Galeries Lafayette and Opéra Garnier within easy reach as well.

07Making the most of a stay

Booking directly through the hotel's own website carries the advantages you would expect — a guaranteed best rate, wider room availability, and that complimentary 45-minute private pool session thrown in. Given how different each room category feels, it's worth reading the room pages closely rather than choosing on price alone: a Junior Suite with terrace and a Standard Double are, in effect, two different hotels. The restaurant's continuous service from noon until 11pm makes Le Ballu useful even for guests just passing through the 9th for a meal, not only those staying the night.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.