Paris, France · Boutique Hotel · ★★★★★
Hôtel Costes
Where fashion and baroque collide, and nobody admits to being impressed. 239-241 Rue Saint-Honoré, 1st arrondissement.
Where fashion and baroque collide, and nobody admits to being impressed. 239-241 Rue Saint-Honoré, 1st arrondissement.
"Jacques Garcia's defining 1990s design hotel, the Costes brothers' Rue Saint-Honoré flagship, the Café Costes courtyard."
Why this rank, Hôtel Costes opened in 1996 at 239 Rue Saint-Honoré, the Costes brothers' flagship hotel and the Jacques Garcia-designed property that defined the 1990s Paris luxury-design hotel format. The Rue Saint-Honoré address puts the property between Place Vendôme and the Louvre, in the heart of the Rive Droite fashion corridor. 84 rooms across the building, each individually designed in Garcia's signature opulent style with dark woods, velvet upholstery, and dramatic lighting. The property has operated continuously under family ownership for 28 years. Café Costes, the courtyard restaurant with retractable roof, has been one of Paris's most-recognizable fashion-industry tables since the 1990s. The Bar Costes operates as the cocktail room with the Costes-branded music compilation series. The Spa Costes occupies a dedicated floor with a black-tile swimming pool. The lobby remains intentionally darker than Palace-tier competitors, the property's defining design choice. Best for fashion-industry travel, anniversary trips, and stays calibrated for the Costes lifestyle.
Best room: Junior Suite Costes, Garcia-designed interior, Rue Saint-Honoré-facing.
"The garden is the most famous hotel courtyard in Paris. The rooms are dark and deliberately seductive. The Costes CD compilation has been playing in boutiques for thirty years. None of this is an accident."
Jean-Louis Costes opened this hotel in 1995 and hired Jacques Garcia to design it in the style of a Second Empire private mansion, heavy drapes, dark lacquered walls, velvet upholstery, Murano glass light fittings, and the kind of studied opulence that looks expensive because it is. The 114 rooms are individually configured and collectively unmistakeable. Mini rooms are honest about their size. The duplexes are the hotel's private argument for why some guests never leave.
The courtyard garden is what the Costes is famous for. In summer it becomes the most photographed hotel terrace in Paris, candlelit at night, draped in climbing plants, populated by the kind of crowd that arrives in clothes that took longer to select than the menu. Breakfast in the garden is one of the pleasures the 1st arrondissement offers unreservedly. Lunch and dinner sustain the atmosphere with French brasserie classics executed at a level that the kitchen has never needed to announce.
The underground pool is small and intentional, not an athletic facility but a visual one, tiled in deep colours with lighting calibrated for effect rather than laps. The bar works at all hours. The Costes music compilations, ambient, slightly sensual, the soundtrack to a particular idea of European sophistication, have been playing since the hotel opened and have achieved a life independent of the building. You will recognise them instantly if you've ever been in a boutique in Milan or a hotel lobby in Kyoto.
The location is impeccable. The Rue Saint-Honoré luxury corridor runs in both directions: Hermès, Balenciaga, Goyard, and the Palais Royal are within a five-minute walk. The Tuileries and the Louvre are ten minutes. The Costes occupies the middle of the 1st arrondissement's best shopping street and behaves as though this is not unusual.
The Costes offers a honeymoon aesthetic that the traditional palace hotels cannot. The dark, sensual rooms, particularly the duplex suites, create an intimate environment that feels genuinely private. Dinner in the garden on arrival night, cocktails in the bar later, and the knowledge that you're in the middle of Paris's most concentrated luxury mile: a first night in the city worth the booking.
The Costes is for anniversaries where atmosphere matters more than ceremony. The hotel doesn't stage celebrations, it provides a setting in which celebrating feels natural. Book a duplex suite, dine in the garden, and let the environment do the work. The Rue Saint-Honoré boutiques, open until early evening, make the afternoon productive in whatever way your anniversary requires.
For a Paris bachelor or bachelorette group that wants style over spectacle, the Costes is the correct address. The bar operates on its own logic. The crowd is international, fashion-adjacent, and largely indifferent to groups that know what they're doing. The garden in summer accommodates private table reservations. The neighbourhood puts Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré shopping and the Champs-Élysées nightlife axis within ten minutes.
Rates shown are approximate. Verify at time of booking.
The King's Suite
Monthly. No noise.
Editorial · #17 on the Top 20 Paris Hotels 2026 list
Hôtel Costes ranks #17 because the property remains the defining 1990s Paris design hotel and the working flagship of the Costes hospitality empire (Café Costes, the Hôtel Costes K, and the recently-opened Maison Costes in Marseille all extend the brand). The Jacques Garcia design language, dark woods, velvet, theatrical lighting, defined the Paris luxury-design hotel format for the 2000s and remains the property's principal aesthetic signature.
For Paris visitors, Costes is the address for fashion-industry stays, after-show evenings, and any Paris trip where the property's pulse is the trip's principal energy. The Rue Saint-Honoré location between Place Vendôme and the Louvre puts the property in the heart of the Rive Droite fashion corridor. The Café Costes courtyard with retractable roof has been one of Paris's most-recognizable fashion-industry tables since 1996. The Costes-branded music compilation series, released annually since the 2000s, remains a defining cultural deposit of the property.