The Peninsula Paris

The Peninsula Paris is best read from the bottom up. The ornate Avenue Kléber façade and its glass canopy set the register at street level, close to the Arc de Triomphe and the better-behaved streets of the 16th arrondissement.

Below the pavement lies the quietest floor of the building, given over to water, marble and silence. Above it, the Premier Rooms face the street, each with a dressing room of its own, which is the detail that decides how an evening begins. Higher still, the suites reach the scale of a Paris apartment. At the top, L’Oiseau Blanc opens onto the roofline, while LiLi keeps modern Cantonese cooking within the same walls. The building is worth reading as a section drawing, since every floor holds a different idea about the city.

The Kléber arrival

Avenue Kléber runs from the Arc de Triomphe towards Trocadéro, which places the hotel among the calmer grandeurs of the 16th rather than among the shopping crowds. The façade is elaborate, the canopy is glass, and the sequence from pavement to hall is choreographed with some care. Paris does not hand out addresses of this kind often, and the building spends its position on ceremony rather than on noise.

The hour before dinner

Premier Rooms measure 45 to 50 square metres and face the street, with a sitting area, marble in the bathroom, a separate rain shower and a dressing room to walk into. Getting ready stops being a scramble and becomes the first act of the evening. The suites take the idea further, the Peninsula Suite giving its living room formal proportions, deep seating and a grand piano, in the manner of an apartment kept for entertaining rather than for living in.

Below the street, above the zinc

The lowest floor is the quietest, with a 20-metre pool, vitality pools and treatment rooms, and none of the city audible. The highest is the loudest in the visual sense, since L’Oiseau Blanc sets dinner among the roofs and lets Paris supply the rest. LiLi holds the middle ground with modern Cantonese cooking, which in a Paris hotel is less a novelty than a signature. A stay can move between all three without the building ever being left.