This posting is portion of FT Globetrotter’s tutorial to Paris
SO/Paris, a new luxury lodge on the Rive Droite, is bringing an injection of glitz to a quiet stretch of the 4th arrondissement earlier acknowledged for remaining a ghost city between Bastille and the Marais. With possibly the best sights of the whole metropolis and rooms starting up at €500, it positions alone as becoming a “five-star resort, but not a Palace hotel” — an significantly common way of demarcating itself from much more trad luxury choices — and is making waves between a nicely-heeled intercontinental trend established, who block-booked it for the past two Paris style weeks. Followers of the strike Netflix collection Emily in Paris have flocked to reserve space 1201, which stars for a nanosecond in collection 3 (filmed prior to the lodge even opened) — an encouraged piece of marketing.
But it hasn’t usually been these a glamorous locale. Together with neighbouring Île de la Cité and Île St Louis, the space was the moment an island alone, recognized as Île Louviers, which was employed in the 18th century as a type of large woodpile for Paris’s timber. In 1841, Louis Philippe ordered it to be attached to the Rive Droite and it has remained so at any time since.
Established back from the Seine by one particular highway, SO/Paris occupies 1 facet of a reimagined 1960s intricate of administrative offices, which was greenlit in 2014 as component of mayor Anne Hidalgo’s “Réinventer Paris” task to carry lifetime to dormant locations of the city. The complex is now recognised as La Félicité, a mini village that prides itself on its mixité, comprising housing — each social and private — a crèche, youth hostel, a number of floors of business room and a incredibly excellent boulangerie.
SO/Paris by itself has been created by RDAI architects to be timeless still à la