A star is born: Bulgari’s sparkling addition to the Parisian skyline

This article is part of a guide to Paris from FT Globetrotter

Paris’s Right Bank is having a moment. Not that it is ever really not having one, but there is definitely a boom in the air. This year has seen the opening of three much-heralded luxury hotels in the golden Haussmannian real estate of the 1st and 8th arrondissements. Bernard Arnault’s €750m transformation of the Samaritaine department store into the Cheval Blanc hotel was unveiled in September, while a month later Madame Rêve, a new hotel in Paris’s legendary former 24-hour post office, opened its doors. So far, so français. But the beginning of this month saw the unveiling of something rather different — an injection of Roman high life on the Avenue Georges V in the form of the new Bulgari Hotel Paris.

Roughly equidistant between the Champs Elysées and the Pont de l’Alma, the hotel occupies a prized corner of Georges V with the Rue Pierre Charron. Before the building’s six-year Italian facelift, it was an unattractive 1970s office block — but one that the hotel’s architect designers Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel nevertheless found to have a certain aesthetic potential. It has been spruced up to become an imposing 11-floor neo-Palladian vision of clean vertical lines and honeyed ashlar masonry — similar in style to the nearby Trocadéro, but also to Bulgari’s existing hotels in Milan, London, Dubai, Bali, Beijing and Shanghai.

The word “craftsmanship” is one that is bandied around liberally when it comes to luxury, but in Bulgari’s case, with justification. The brand, which began as a small jewellery emporium on Rome’s Via Sistina in 1884 and is now part of LVMH, has over the decades become synonymous with ultra-high-end opulence thanks to its, well, craftsmanship. This spills over into its hotels. “We treat each opening as if we are launching a jewellery collection,” Silvio Ursini, the group executive vice-president, told me over strong Italian coffee on my visit to the hotel pre-opening.

The second you enter the Paris hotel, you step on a marble and granite eight-pointed star design — inspired, I learnt, by the one in Rome’s Piazza del Campidoglio. Bulgari takes heritage seriously. This is not just any old Carrara marble, but Breccia Medicea marble — the ultra-veiny marble of choice for the Medicis. The theme continues: the Murano glass chandeliers are from Barovier & Toso, who have been blowing glass since 1295. The pretty scalloped mosaic pattern in the glorious vitality pool — itself a homage to Rome’s bathing tradition — is copied from the Caracalla baths, which Bulgari helped restore (and which is also mirrored in its Divas’ Dream jewellery collection). 

But this is more than just a slab of Italian marble plonked incongruously on the Avenue Georges V — it is a carefully curated Franco-Italian crossbreed. So while the floors of the hotel are black granite, the rugs in the rooms have a herringbone design, a nod to the parquetry of Haussmannian Paris. The menu in the excellent in-house Il Ristorante, overseen by three-Michelin-starred chef Niko Romito, may be largely Italian, with an emphasis on light, fresh cooking, but you can still order a blanquette de veau, albeit only on room service.

Paris is the latest stop for the Roman fine-jewellery and luxury-goods house’s hotel expansion, which will see new properties open in Moscow, Rome, Tokyo, Miami and Los Angeles over the next few years. It took eight years to find the perfect spot for the Paris hotel; it needed to be in proximity to the city’s two standalone Bulgari stores — the accessories outlet on the Champs Elysées, and the marble-hewn flagship at No 23 Place Vendôme. As Jean-Christophe Babin, Bulgari’s group CEO, told me: “Place Vendôme is the high-jewellery centre of Paris, and therefore of the world!” 

There are currently 12 luxury hotels in Paris that have been awarded the much-coveted “Palace” status. Any new five-star hotel has to prove its exceptionality before even being considered. But this is apparently not the principal drive for Bulgari. “Our intention was never to compete with the grand hotels,” Ursini explained. “We hope our more intimate size [76 rooms and suites] will underline the difference. There’s more of a clubby feel.”

Ursini hopes the hotel will become popular with locals. I suspect the bar, with its glossy lacquered walls and fortifying Negronis, will soon be a sweet spot for a smart rive droite crowd. With no meeting or conference rooms, this is not a hotel for business travellers, Ursini asserts. It is designed for the hybrid traveller “who blurs the lines” and might take a meeting in the Mad Men-esque lounge before going to a museum or buying some wine. Or some jewellery, perhaps, even from the on-site boutique.

Many guests, I suspect, will find it hard to leave the hotel. My room, a spacious 42 sq m, overlooked the Avenue, the Eiffel tower just visible from one corner, glinting behind the spire of the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. The decor is pared back for maximum restfulness, but there are playful treats aplenty: a minibar hidden inside an oversized tweed travelling trunk, a dressing table worthy of Sophia Loren (who coincidentally took up residence on the Avenue Georges V in the 1960s) and, best of all, an all-singing, all-dancing padded iPad that allows you to control your entire in-room experience without leaving your bed. Lose it under the high-thread-count covers and you will have to actually get up to turn the TV on, order (an eye-wateringly expensive yet extraordinary) breakfast or communicate with the concierge. Hotel tech has come a long way; it works so well I didn’t bother reaching for my phone — I was having too much fun with my new friend.

Dragging myself away from the cashmere blanket, leather-clad coffee machine and exciting Bulgari bath products on a chilly late November day was hard, but with all of the eighth arrondissement at my feet I had another espresso and hit the Champs Elysées. This feted area of Paris has so much more to it than shopping and, determined to cram as much in into one day as I could, I swerved the boutiques and their desultory queues of bone-cold tourists and headed to the queue-free Arc de Triomphe instead. Despite multiple trips up the Eiffel Tower and the Tour Montparnasse, I had never mounted this great monument to those who have fought and died in the name of la patrie.

With its never-ending flame burning below for the Unknown Soldier, and a video exhibition about the late artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 60-year project to wrap up the arch, there was plenty to keep me occupied for a contemplative hour without venturing on to the parapet. But once up there, the panoramic wind-whipped views of the grisaille cityscape — with those 12 avenues radiating outwards in another great multi-pointed star — reminded me that Paris is at its moody best when the buildings are the same hue as the sky.

After this, I was in need of sustenance and so headed into the bowels of the Musée d’Art Moderne to Forest, a trendy new eatery that puts “plants in the middle of the plate”. This is about as far from Brasserie Lipp as you can imagine: the vegetable-celebrating menu is printed on textured handmade paper; concrete walls are alive with real branches lit up with colourful lights; and the clientele is a largely female arty crowd. I had a menu fixe of parsnip soup (very hard to find in France, my friend who joined me exclaimed in delight), a vegetarian bruschetta and coffee. We deliberately left room for a visit to a nearby branch of Cyril Lignac, pâtisserie king of Paris. There was a ligne, bien sûr, but the sight of an unctuous royal au chocolat in the window spurred us on.

Diagonally opposite is the Palais Galliera, Paris’s museum of fashion history, currently showing Vogue Paris, 1920-2020. Snaffling our patisseries beforehand in very un-Vogue-like fashion, we spent a glorious hour studying a room plastered with magazine covers, from the very first issues with their elegant art deco illustrations to the gender-fluid present day, via the 1960s when Catherine Deneuve seemed to grace every cover. This was the perfect exhibition — satisfying yet small.

On the way back to the hotel, we marvelled at the marriage of old and new in this storied area of Paris as we stumbled on the 19th-century-style gold signage of a small neighbourhood chocolate shop, Confiserie St Pierre on the Rue de Chaillot, which we learnt has been going for 40 years. The two women inside, who could have walked out of a Jacques Demy film, were proud to talk and taste us through their curated selection of artisanal products, carefully displayed in typical glass jars and counters — pain d’épices, jars of Normandy honey and bags of orangettes coated in flaked almonds.

Back at Bulgari, only five minutes’ walk away, there was just time to visit the penthouse. The vast 400sq m apartment consists of two bedrooms, two ensuites with bathtubs and sinks carved from single blocks of marble, a gym, a sauna, a dining room and a 360-degree terrace to rival that of the Arc de Triomphe, but without the selfie-sticks.

From the balcony, you can wave across the avenue at the inhabitants of the Four Seasons’ penthouse or simply marvel at le tout Paris. The terrace’s crowning glory is a 250 sq m garden, complete with magnolias, lemon and pear trees and redcurrant bushes, planted a year ago in order to bear fruit in time for the opening. Gardens in Paris, of course, are almost non-existent — even a tiny balcony is highly prized. Here, however, you can lounge on 11th-floor springy grass with a cocktail in hand and a curious sense that the Eiffel Tower is glittering just for you. And for a cool €35,000 per night, it should do too.

Cities with the FT

FT Globetrotter, our insider guides to some of the world’s greatest cities, offers expert advice on eating and drinking, exercise, art and culture — and much more. Find us in Paris, Tokyo, New York, London, Rome, Frankfurt, Singapore, Hong Kong and Miami

What is your favourite way to spend a day on Paris’s Right Bank? Tell us in the comments below.