 |
|
|
Press Coverage of Marais House
|
|
Paris Notes - March 2006
In the March 2006 issue, Amanda MacKenzierace says: Hôtel Attitude “Eclectic” and “hip” may dominate the Paris hotel renaissance, but even they don’t make up the whole picture. My last jigsaw piece falls into place back in the historic center where Le Marais House (a stone’s throw from the city’s oldest house, 3rd, www.maraishouse.com) is carving out a niche all its own. Technically, it’s not quite in the Marais. Nor is it strictly a hotel—more of a cross between a hotel particulier and a prestige bed & breakfast. But it qualifies amply because Yann-Gabriel Hentschke’s meticulously restored interior breaks the mold—and positively exudes attitude.“This was really the bourgeois end of the street. Basically, I recreated a house that never existed,” says Hentschke, who lovingly tracked down the raw materials to transform a derelict shell into a chateau-in-miniature. Ushering me up the finely wrought staircase into a ferny, glass-floored atrium, he points out eighteenth-century Venetian painted doors. There are stone floors, circa sixteen-something, brought back from Poitiers and Tourenne. The fireplaces date mostly from the same era. The result is glorious, right down to the light-play on the Bevilacqua walls, the mahogany-paneled gym-cum-sauna and the four-poster beds. Carefully selected antiques complete the effect, and go some way towards explaining Hentschke’s policy of disclosing the exact location when guests reserve. With only five rooms, one of which functions as a suite, intimacy is guaranteed. But so, predictably, is privacy—look behind the carved oak doors for the elevator that accesses each room. Downstairs, where breakfast is served under fifteenth-century vaults, I struggle to picture the surroundings as they might have been a decade or two ago. Then, the building was a gold-leaf workshop where craftsmen turned out the traditional lettered facades for artisan shop-fronts. “Pains français, viennois, seigle et gruau”? Perhaps. |
Go
to | © 2005 - 2006 MaraisHouse.com. All rights reserved. | Web Site by LineAngle.com |