Relais Christine

Relais Christine

The entrance is on Rue Christine, which is one of those Left Bank streets that exists entirely for the people who live on it, and the gate, when you find it, opens into a cobblestone courtyard that has been producing this particular quality of silence since the 13th century. The Relais Christine began as an Augustinian abbey, became a private mansion under Henri IV, and has been a hotel since 1979, which is long enough for the guests who discovered it early to have developed a proprietary feeling about it. A Relais & Châteaux member, 48 rooms, and the kind of address that people tend not to share too freely. The rooms are individually decorated across the abbey's various buildings, beamed ceilings, stone walls, lush fabrics and upholstery, and the garden-facing suites with their private terraces are the ones to request if the budget extends to it. Laura Gonzalez oversaw the most recent renovation, keeping the timeless register while giving the old stones, as she put it, a new spin: the result is a hotel that feels simultaneously of its century and of its moment. The spa runs under the 13th-century vaulted cellars, Guerlain treatments, a jacuzzi, sauna, and Finnish sauna, and the quality of the light down there is the kind that belongs to medieval stone. Breakfast is served in the vaulted dining room, which is the most atmospheric way to begin a Paris morning at this end of the Left Bank. The honesty bar in the lounge is the right way to end one. This is a hotel that has earned its reputation through repetition: guests who came once and never stayed anywhere else in Paris since. The Louvre and Notre-Dame are both within ten minutes on foot. The bouquinistes, the Pont Neuf, the galleries and bistros of Saint-Germain are all closer than that. The short version: Forty-eight individually designed rooms in a 13th-century Augustinian abbey off Rue Christine, with a Guerlain spa under the medieval vaults, a cobblestone courtyard, and the kind of service that explains why the same guests come back every year.