Paris, France · Palace Hotel · ★★★★★
Hôtel de Crillon
The palace that predates the French Revolution and outlasted it.
The palace that predates the French Revolution and outlasted it.
"The 1758 Louis XV-era palace on Place de la Concorde, reopened 2017 by Rosewood after a four-year restoration that reset the Paris luxury floor."
Why this rank, The Hôtel de Crillon occupies the 1758 palace at 10 Place de la Concorde, designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel for Louis XV. Rosewood Hotels acquired the property in 2010 and led the 2013-2017 restoration that returned the building to current Palace specification, retaining the Marie-Antoinette Suite (where the queen took piano lessons in the 1770s) and the Leonard Bernstein Suite (the composer's preferred Paris residence). 124 rooms and suites across the restored building. L'Écrin under chef Boris Campanella holds one Michelin star. Brasserie d'Aumont runs the all-day program. Les Ambassadeurs has been restored as the property's signature dining room. Bar 228 remains the most-photographed cocktail bar in the 8th arrondissement. The location at Place de la Concorde puts the Tuileries Garden and the Champs-Élysées within walking distance. Best for anniversaries, milestone trips, and any stay where the building's historic significance is the principal draw. The Crillon is the de-facto address for state visits to France; the suite assignments and the protocol-trained service tenure reflect this institutional role.
Best room: Marie-Antoinette Suite, the queen's piano-lesson room, fully restored.
"Built for Louis XV in 1758 and still receiving guests, at some point the Crillon stopped being a hotel and became an institution. Rosewood understood this and restored it accordingly: no superfluous modernity, just a very old building made to feel genuinely cared for."
King Louis XV commissioned the Crillon in 1758 as one of two identical neoclassical palaces flanking the Place de la Concorde, the square that would later become the site of the guillotine. The palace survived the Revolution. It became a hotel in 1909. Marie Antoinette took piano lessons in the room that is now the hotel's most coveted suite. The building has witnessed more French history than most French history books contain.
Rosewood acquired the Crillon in 2013 and closed it for a four-year restoration overseen by designer Aline Asmar d'Amman. The brief was exceptional: preserve and celebrate the architecture without making it feel like a museum. She succeeded. The 78 rooms and 46 suites are dressed in hand-embroidered silks and bespoke furnishings, with the original Corinthian pilasters and gilded mouldings intact. The restoration won international design awards. More importantly, the rooms feel inhabited rather than preserved.
The building's position on Place de la Concorde is unmatched for symbolic weight. Walk out the front door and you face the Champs-Élysées in one direction and the Tuileries in the other. The Louvre is twelve minutes on foot. The Musée d'Orsay is a twenty-minute walk across the river. The Crillon has always been Paris's most central palace hotel, and the 2017 reopening confirmed it had earned that designation.
The restaurant Les Ambassadeurs, now reimagined as a contemporary brasserie, occupies one of Paris's great dining rooms, a gilt-and-marble hall that once served as the French Foreign Ministry's ceremonial salon. The cocktail bar Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels, a collaboration with the acclaimed wine bar of the same name, is one of the best wine experiences in the city. Afternoon tea in the Jardin d'Hiver, a glass-roofed winter garden, is a Paris ritual.
The spa occupies two floors below the palace, with a hammam, swimming pool, and treatment rooms that feel deliberately private. The fitness centre is genuine rather than decorative. The service throughout is of the Rosewood standard, warm, personal, not performatively formal. They call it "Residential Style": the idea that you are a guest in a private home, not a customer in a luxury establishment. At the Crillon, the house is extraordinary enough to make the distinction matter.
Request the Marie Antoinette Suite and you will sleep in the room where the queen practised piano as a child. The symbolism is not lost on the hotel, the suite is fitted with a private terrace overlooking the Place de la Concorde and is among the most extraordinary hotel rooms in Europe. For a honeymoon with genuine historical weight, there is no equivalent address in Paris.
The Jardin d'Hiver, the glass-roofed winter garden, is one of the most private and atmospheric settings for a proposal in the city. The concierge team will arrange flowers, champagne, and a private table with practised discretion. The building's weight of history makes the moment feel consequential in a way that more modern hotels cannot replicate.
The Crillon rewards returning guests. The Rosewood service philosophy places significant emphasis on remembering preferences, the room you prefer, how you take your coffee, the champagne you ordered on your last visit. For milestone anniversaries, the hotel will work with you in advance to design an experience that references your previous stays. The building itself provides the occasion; the team ensures the details match it.
Rates shown are approximate. Verify at time of booking.
The King's Suite
Monthly. No noise.
Editorial · #2 on the Top 20 Paris Hotels 2026 list
The Hôtel de Crillon ranks where it does in Paris because the building is the most-significant Louis XV-era palace converted to a hotel anywhere in France. The 1758 façade overlooking Place de la Concorde, the Marie-Antoinette Suite where the queen took piano lessons, and the Salons Aigle, Bonaparte, and Marie-Antoinette in the public spaces are not heritage decoration, they are working spaces in the daily operation of the hotel.
For Paris visitors, the Crillon is the address for stays where the building's historic significance is part of the trip's purpose. The 2017 reopening after the four-year Rosewood restoration reset the operational standard to current Palace level. Place de la Concorde puts the Tuileries Garden out the front door, the Champs-Élysées two blocks west, and the Musée d'Orsay across the Seine ten minutes by foot. The Ambassadeurs salon and Les Ambassadeurs restaurant under chef Boris Campanella deliver the dining program that the building's heritage demands.