L'Hôtel, Paris – twenty rooms and Oscar Wilde's last address

On rue des Beaux-Arts in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the former Hôtel d'Alsace, where Oscar Wilde died in 1900, is now a five-star hotel of just twenty rooms dressed by Jacques Garcia.

In November 1900 Oscar Wilde died in a room of a modest hotel on rue des Beaux-Arts, then called the Hôtel d'Alsace. More than a century later the same building, now simply L'Hôtel, is one of the smallest five-star hotels in Paris: twenty rooms over a handful of floors, a vaulted pool below ground and a plaque by the door that recalls its most famous guest.

The street runs between the École des Beaux-Arts and the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in the 6th arrondissement on the Left Bank.

01From Queen Margot to the Hôtel d'Alsace

The site once belonged to the estate of Queen Margot, Marguerite de Valois, and according to History Hit includes part of her seventeenth-century Pavillon d'Amour. The present hotel was built in 1828 by Célestin-Joseph Happe. It was renamed Hôtel d'Allemagne in 1868 and, two years later, Hôtel d'Alsace.

It was under that name that Wilde, in exile after his release from prison, spent his last months here. He criticised the condition of the place in his writing, and he is reputed to have said that he was dying beyond his means – though the exact wording is disputed. The room in which he died is now the Oscar Wilde Suite.

02L'Hôtel, from 1963

The hotel was bought in 1963 and took the shorter, more intimate name L'Hôtel. In the decades that followed it drew a well-known clientele; History Hit lists Salvador Dalí, Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra and Jim Morrison among its guests. A second plaque at the entrance commemorates the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

03Jacques Garcia's twenty rooms

In 2000 the interior architect Jacques Garcia was commissioned to redecorate the hotel. He drew out the original architectural features and dressed the rooms in panelling and fabric, in an ornate Rococo spirit, so that each room is different while sharing his signature. In February 2014 the hotel received its fifth star.

The Oscar Wilde Suite is on the first floor, papered in green with a peacock motif and opening onto a private terrace where breakfast can be served. Another room, once associated with the music-hall star Mistinguett, keeps an Art Deco mirrored bed.

04The pool under the vaults

Below ground, beneath stone vaults, there is a small pool and a hammam that guests can reserve privately, with massages available by the water on request. In the evening, Wilde's Lounge serves aperitifs and cocktails, with jazz on some nights.

05Saint-Germain-des-Prés on foot

The École des Beaux-Arts is at the end of the street, the Seine and the Louvre just across the Pont des Arts, and the cafés, galleries and bookshops of Saint-Germain all around. The whole city is in VERA PI's guide to Paris, and more great hotels are collected on metromode.co.

06Making the most of a stay

With only twenty rooms, book early, and ask for the Oscar Wilde Suite if you want the terrace. Reserve the pool for an hour in the afternoon. The hotel has no restaurant of its own, so make it an evening in Saint-Germain and end it with a nightcap in Wilde's Lounge.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.