Top 10: characterful Paris hotels

An insider’s guide to the most characterful places to stay in Paris, including the best hotels for families, couples and singles, with period charm, Seine views and quirky bedrooms. 

Shangri-La Hotel, Paris

Paris, France

8Telegraph expert rating

The Shangri-La Paris offers a great view of the Eiffel Tower, so close across the Seine that you can almost touch it. It’s an escapade into a sybaritic vision of France past. Originally the private residence of Roland Bonaparte, great nephew of the famous Emperor, who filled his home with eagles, crowns, imperial bees and Bs in a style that is rather more Louis XIV than Napoleon, it has a wedding-cake facade, grand stairway and a string of historic salons, which have been listed and painstakingly restored with hand-gilded panelling and neoclassical friezes. It costs a fortune but this is a place you come to for a special occasion. Read expert review From ￡688per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

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Le Meurice

Paris, France

9Telegraph expert rating

Le Meurice is superbly placed for visiting the Louvre or for classy shopping on rue St-Honoré. It’s very grand but not stuffy. Dali used to stay here with his ocelots and that has clearly left a legacy of tolerance for guest’s foibles. There are chandeliers and marble galore but also a frosted mirror in the entrance hall where guests can doodle or sign their autograph. The 160 rooms and suites are sybaritic oceans of pastel-coloured silks and bergère chairs à la Louis XVI. Top-hatted doormen and uniformed concierges master perfect discretion with a glint of humour. If you can afford it it’s worth it. Read expert review From ￡600per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

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Le Royal Monceau Raffles Paris

Paris, France

8Telegraph expert rating

As soon as you see the red lanterns and red glass marquise outside, you know this place is slightly naughty but nice. It’s at its best downstairs in the public spaces, the lounge stretches endlessly mixing vistas and secluded corners, with illuminated Long Bar for seeing and being seen, and a cascade of chandeliers in the stairwell. The 149 rooms and suites are far from designer minimalism, rather, a Starck-conceived artistic clutter of eclectic lamps and tables, mixing retro and contemporary touches, with a vast island bed, photos and artworks propped against the wall and a guitar for you to strum. There's even a transportable recording studio if you wish. Read expert review From ￡661per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

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Hotel du Petit Moulin

Paris, France

8Telegraph expert rating

A narrow historic street in the happening Marais, amid contemporary art galleries and original fashion boutiques. A unique blend of Marais history and the design flair of Christian Lacroix have quickly made this a cult address. Fashioned out of two ancient 17th-century buildings, the reception was once one of the oldest bakeries in Paris, whose customers included Victor Hugo, and it has kept its painted storefront, winding corridors and balustraded staircase, amid discretely installed mod cons. The 17 rooms are all different with boldly clashing colours and lush fabrics. Lacroix took inspiration from the idea of the voyage in both time and place in a heady mix that takes in a starry night sky, catwalk sketches and 1960s furniture. Read expert review From ￡168per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

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Relais Christine

Paris, France

7Telegraph expert rating

Set at the back of a lovely paved courtyard, the reception with original painted beams and lounge hung with portraits make you feel as if in you're in your own period mansion, yet it's near Cluny or the Sainte-Chapelle. Built over an Augustinian monastery, vaulted cellars now contain a breakfast room, gym and spa. Choose between the high ceilings and tall windows of the first floor étage noble or the romance of mansarded attic duplexes. Decor ranges from romantic prints to more modern minimalist stripes in warm colours and plush fabrics, some bathrooms are in stripey marble, others have smart new mosaics. A couple of rooms have French windows opening directly onto the private rear garden. Read expert review From ￡274per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

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Hotel Jules & Jim

Paris, France

8Telegraph expert rating

Natural materials, stylish design and a meeting of modernity and history define this hotel named after the Truffaut film. With 23 rooms divided over series of small buildings, life centres round the convivial paved courtyard with its planted wall and real outdoor fireplace and the bar in a converted silversmith’s workshop. The reception hall leading between street and courtyard doubles as a gallery with changing photo shows, and they even sometimes set up a temporary cinema - just 20 seats - in the vaulted cellars. In the evening the breakfast room becomes a happening bar, where you can sample fine wine, a large choice of whiskies or have a cocktail created to measure by the barman. Read expert review From ￡155per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

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Hotel des Grands Hommes

Paris, France

8Telegraph expert rating

Classical busts behind the reception desk give a knowing nod at the great men reposing in the nearby Panthéon, and the Grands Hommes can boast its own great man in André Breton who invented automatic writing here in 1919. The rooms are compact but comfortable cocoons, decorated with Toile de Jouy fabrics with neo-classical motifs and old engravings. Ask for a Superior room overlooking the Panthéon, or a fifth-floor deluxe room where you can take breakfast on your balcony. Although there are some triple rooms suitable for families, this is more of a place for a romantic weekend à deux. Read expert review From ￡107per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

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Caron de Beaumarchais

Paris, France

8Telegraph expert rating

This quirky little independent hotel, themed around Beaumarchais's 'The Marriage of Figaro,' is packed to the wooden beams with period detail and charm. Guests can expect a good old-fashioned welcome, with all the bustle of the Marais district on the doorstep. The lobby is set up as an 18th-century drawing room, complete with beautiful silk wallpaper and exquisite Louis XVI-style furniture – there’s even a harp and card table left mid-game. Attention to period detail carries on into the rooms with their fine fabrics, chandeliers and painstakingly chosen antique pieces. Pets are welcome – in fact, the owner's dog is a regular presence. Read expert review From ￡125per night

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OFF Paris Seine

Paris, France

8Telegraph expert rating

There’s no forgetting you’re in Paris at this groundbreaking hotel afloat a stylish boat on the River Seine. Designer rooms are a nod to Le Corbusier, while the fashionable lounge-bar with dipping pool begs guests to switch off and relax in one of the city’s loveliest new lifestyle spaces. With its beachy lounge bar – fast becoming a hot spot for sundowners among trendy Parisians – and laidback vibe, this is an address where guests kick off their shoes, dip their toes in the water and relax on a shimmering golden Fatboy with ethereal Seine views. The beauty of waking up to a water view and Parisian péniches sailing by is likewise undeniable. Read expert review From ￡120per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com

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Maison Souquet

Paris, France

9Telegraph expert rating

Colonising the characterful district of Pigalle, the historic building's brief moment as a maison close gives it a slightly naughty spirit. The discrete classical golden stone fa?ade hardly prepares you for the interior, as you walk into a Moorish-style tiled salon, recuperated from a mansion in Brussels. It sets the scene, allied with the cosiness of plush Napoleon III crimson velvet chairs, playing on the house's brief period as a maison close in 1905 frequented by socialites and intellectuals of the day. Each room is named after a courtesan, the 20 rooms and suites are a feast of different textiles covering walls and stuffed bedheads. Read expert review From ￡294per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com