Les Bains – from Proust's bathhouse to Starck's dance floor

At 7 rue du Bourg-l'Abbé, a brick building topped with a stone archway and a carved Bacchus mask has worn three disguises since the 1880s. It opened in 1885 as Paris's first luxury bathhouse, the haunt of Zola, Monet, Manet and a loyal Marcel Proust, before mutating in 1978 into Les Bains Douches, the nightclub where Bowie, Jagger and Warhol crossed Philippe Starck's black-and-white checkerboard dance floor. The club closed in 2010; by 2015 the same address had reopened as Les Bains, a 39-room five-star hotel run by Jean-Pierre Marois, son of the man who bought the building in the 1960s. The MICHELIN Guide now lists it as a One Key hotel, a rare case of a Paris address whose nightlife legend and hotel ambitions carry equal weight.

01The house

The building's bones are pure Haussmann, raised for the Guerbois family in 1885 as Paris's grandest private baths. Of that first incarnation, mostly the brick façade and the stone entrance arch, crowned by a carved mask of Bacchus, survive. Marcel Proust came for the steam rooms, and the Guerbois café nearby was famous as the meeting place of the earliest Impressionists around Monet.

In 1978 the ailing bathhouse was reborn as Les Bains Douches, a nightclub designed by a then little-known Philippe Starck. His black-and-white checkerboard dance floor, built from ordinary kitchen tiles as a cost-saving measure, became one of the most photographed surfaces in Paris, crossed over two decades by Catherine Deneuve, Grace Jones, Kate Moss and Karl Lagerfeld, while Prince, Joy Division and Depeche Mode played live. The club closed in 2010 and sat briefly as a squat for street artists before Jean-Pierre Marois, whose family had owned the building for decades, began a full renovation.

The 2015 rebirth brought in architect Vincent Bastie, credited with some 80 Parisian hotel renovations, alongside interior designers Tristan Auer and Denis Montel of RDAI. Starck's legendary dance floor was not removed but repurposed: it now underpins the restaurant, and the hotel's basement club still runs a tiled nod to the original.

02Rooms and suites

Of the hotel's 39 rooms and suites, no two are alike, and Tristan Auer's decoration deliberately blends decades: precious woods, velvet and white marble sit against bespoke furniture, a carpet referencing Serge Gainsbourg and a sofa modelled on Warhol's Factory. Categories run from the 23 m² Classic room up through Superior (26 m²), Deluxe and Executive (both 33 m²), a 36 m² Junior Suite, a 48 m² Suite and the 80 m² Suite Les Bains.

Insider tip

Book the spa or Roxo ahead; the club's DJ nights run Thursday to Saturday.

At the top sits La Suite Penthouse Les Bains Guerbois, an 120 m² apartment for two to four guests. Several rooms keep a private hammam and outdoor shower as a direct nod to the building's bathhouse years, and many open onto south-facing balconies and private terraces — a rarity this close to the centre of Paris.

03Where to eat and drink

Roxo occupies the building's old dance floor beneath a monumental burgundy-lacquered ceiling, built around a central bar and two planted patios. Its name, Portuguese for burgundy, nods to the restaurant's history and to its chef's Brazilian roots, and the kitchen serves French cuisine with international inflections built for sharing. The room runs daily from 7am to midnight, moving from breakfast through lunch and cocktails into festive dinners, with a continental breakfast formula that changes its savoury and sweet plates daily according to the chef.

On Saturdays and Sundays the Brunch Les Bains formula brings a detox-leaning spread of one main dish, a healthy juice, pancakes and a hot drink, served between 11am and 2pm.

04The club and the legendary pool

Downstairs, the Club des Bains keeps the nightlife going with DJ sets from Thursday to Saturday and four to five concerts most weeks, a direct descendant of the room where Prince once played a private show. The club's dance floor reinterprets Starck's original black-and-white tiling on a smaller scale.

The real relic sits just off it: the mosaic swimming basin from the 1885 and 1978 incarnations was lifted, moved and rebuilt to its original specifications, with its cracked white-and-frosted-blue tiling intact. It now anchors the hotel's wellness area rather than its nightlife, a quieter afterlife for the pool that once drew Belle Époque bathers and 1980s revellers alike.

05Spa and wellbeing

The spa trades under the name Les Bains Guerbois, a conscious return to the building's first identity. Tucked into a secluded apartment within the hotel, it holds a relaxation lounge, a salon dedicated to the house's signature scents, and two treatment rooms set as boudoirs on either side of a large half-moon window. Massages use three Les Bains Guerbois fragrances — Le Phénix, Oud Laqué and Damier — reworked as scented oils, alongside Tibetan, deep-tissue and kobido facial treatments.

Access extends to the hammam and the rebuilt 1885 basin, now run as a vitality pool with a counter-current swim system, massage jets, bubble jets and a waterfall. A monthly programme of yoga, breathwork and ritual sessions, led by practitioners including Humble Warrior founder Dani, runs alongside the treatment menu.

06The neighbourhood

The address sits in the 3rd arrondissement's Marais, on a narrow street a few minutes from Centre Pompidou and the old Les Halles market district. Étienne Marcel métro station, served by line 4, is roughly 230 metres away and gives direct access across the city toward Notre-Dame and Gare du Nord.

Directly across rue du Bourg-l'Abbé, the Les Bains Guerbois concept store trades as a hybrid boutique and gallery, selling the house's own perfumes alongside limited design, fashion and art collaborations tied to the hotel's history.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.