Saint James Paris

• NR This hotel has not yet been rated by Tablet Hotels guests.

• 1 Verified
  Guest Review

  View

Saint James Paris

Neighborhood: 16th Arr. (Trocadero/Bois de Boulogne)

Style: Traditional Elegance

Atmosphere: Secluded

48 Rooms

Suffice it to say that the Saint James is anything but typical. In Paris an hôtel particulier, a freestanding house, is unusual enough — something like the Saint James, almost a country-style château, surrounded by a wall and garden, is vanishingly rare. And now that it’s open for business as a hotel, it’s almost too much to take. Our English teachers taught us that something either is or is not unique — there are no such things as degrees of uniqueness. But then they’ve never stayed at the Saint James, which is, grammar be damned, one of the most unique hotels we’ve ever seen.

It’s partly owing to the house’s situation, to be sure, but most of the place’s personality is thanks to the work of Bambi Sloan, an iconoclastic, self-taught Parisian designer whose work shows no regard at all for the uptight geometries and constrained palettes of the stereotypical “minimalist” boutique hotel. The common thread is a sensibility that’s eclectic and whimsical but never kitschy or unserious; the spaces are full of unexpected detail but sophisticated all the same.

And many of these bedrooms are given country-house space to work with, despite their city location, the suites, particularly, spreading out quite comfortably. A chic restaurant in the well-preserved dining room and a well-equipped spa and fitness room are among the Saint James’s other decidedly genteel charms. And for all its seeming seclusion, the hotel is surrounded by some of urban Paris’s most desirable residential real estate— thus the Saint James Club, an English-style social club, can be depended upon to draw a posh crowd.