Hôtel Dame des Arts
This Left Bank beauty started life as a Holiday Inn with only two redeeming features: a sparkling location on the Rive Gauche, and a rooftop terrace space that most hoteliers would throw their life's savings into the Seine for. Now, under the guiding hand of Imshan Jamal, it's become a cool, sophisticated stay. The property's 109 rooms are small but sleek - a collage of bamboo, bouclé, glass and curving corners, with Diptyque in the bathrooms and Alessi kettles on the counter. A Mexican kitchen (perhaps riffing on the hotel's Latin Quarter location) serves chilli-spiked Breton oysters, sea bream aguachile and red tuna tostadas throughout the day. Downstairs, in the basement, a small gym is sequestered into a curved, wooden cocoon. And the rooftop? Long gone is the fug of Holiday Inn frumpiness; it's now the place-to-be-seen for Paris' PYTs.