Hôtel de Crillon by Aline Asmar d'Amman

Location: Paris, FranceType: HotelYear: 2017Architect: Aline Asmar d'Amman + Richard MartinetPhotographer: Matthieu Salvaing, Stephan Julliard, Gunnar Klack

Hôtel de Crillon by Aline Asmar d’Amman and Richard Martinet in Paris

Hôtel de Crillon is the restoration of an 18th-century palace on Place de la Concorde in Paris, designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, into a luxury hotel with 124 rooms and suites, a bar and restaurants, a spa with an underground pool and two planted courtyards. The four-year project was led by the artistic director Aline Asmar d'Amman of the Paris studio Culture in Architecture, with the architecture and restoration by the architect Richard Martinet of Affine Design. Managed by Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, the hotel closed on 31 March 2013 and reopened on 5 July 2017.

Listed 19th-century staircase at Hôtel de Crillon with a looping black wrought-iron balustrade, brass lanterns on long chains, white fluted columns and a checkered marble floor with a black sofa

Gabriel’s palace on Place de la Concorde

The building is one of the two colonnaded palaces that Gabriel designed for the northern side of the square laid out for Louis XV, and Architectural Digest dates its front half, facing the Concorde, to 1753. It later became the town house of the Crillon family and opened as a hotel in 1909, keeping the long limestone façade with its Corinthian colonnade over a ground-floor arcade. In 2010 the hotel was acquired by a member of the Saudi royal family, who handed its management to Rosewood.

Salon at Hôtel de Crillon with carved and painted ornamental wall panels, a central bookcase niche, a long cream velvet sofa and a parquet floor

Restoring a listed landmark

Martinet’s work covered the façade and the structure as well as a full reordering of the plan, carried out with the Architectes des Bâtiments de France because parts of the building are listed. A staircase in a 19th-century wing and several salons in Gabriel’s part of the building are landmarked and were restored, while elsewhere walls were opened up and the number of keys was reduced from 147 to 124. Hospitality Design reports that around 600 materials were used across the hotel, 40 of them marble. The garden designer Louis Benech designed the courtyards.

Men's grooming salon at Hôtel de Crillon, a green leather barber's chair before octagonal brass mirrors on a dark wall, white tiles, oak panelling and a zigzag black and white marble floor

Four interior designers

To execute the overhaul d’Amman brought in four interior designers. Tristan Auer, working with Wilson Associates in Paris, reordered much of the ground floor, with a more intimate check-in, a concierge lounge, a cigar lounge, the Brasserie d’Aumont set between the two courtyards and a men’s grooming salon of black and white marble floors, dark green and wood. Chahan Minassian took on most of the bars and restaurants and the spa. He turned the former Les Ambassadeurs restaurant into a bar, adding a painted sky of clouds to its landmarked ceiling and a brutalist chandelier over a new horseshoe bar, dressed the stone shell of the Jardin d’Hiver with mica, and gave the purpose-built pool a skylight from Benech’s Gabriel courtyard and a gold-flecked celadon ceramic wall by the ceramist Peter Lane.

Underground pool at Hôtel de Crillon lit by a skylight, a long dark basin with steel handrails between white loungers and walls of textured gold and celadon ceramic

Vergniol’s rooms and Lagerfeld’s Grands Appartements

Cyril Vergniol designed 114 of the guest rooms, updating their 18th-century shells with 1950s armchairs upholstered in fruit-toned silk, cracked lacquer, marble and original artworks. Karl Lagerfeld designed the two Grands Appartements in the Concorde-facing part of the building, along with a room dedicated to his cat Choupette.

Guest room at Hôtel de Crillon with a white bed under a draped grey canopy, a carved bench with floral upholstery, an oval mirror and pale panelled walls

The historic salons and signature suites

D’Amman herself designed the hotel’s historic salons and its signature suites, among them the Marie-Antoinette Suite, the Duc de Crillon Suite and the Jardin suites, which open onto private garden terraces. She has said that she wanted to create tension between the old and the new rather than pastiche, pairing 18th-century boiserie, chandeliers and marble with contemporary furniture, sculpture and art.

Sitting area of a Jardin suite at Hôtel de Crillon, a Louis-style armchair and side table with flowers beside cream curtains and French doors opening onto a private terrace

Team and credits

The hotel is owned by a member of the Saudi royal family and run as Hôtel de Crillon, A Rosewood Hotel. Aline Asmar d’Amman of Culture in Architecture was the artistic director, Richard Martinet of Affine Design was the architect, and the interiors are by Tristan Auer, Chahan Minassian, Cyril Vergniol, Karl Lagerfeld and Aline Asmar d’Amman, with landscape design by Louis Benech. The photography is by Matthieu Salvaing, Stephan Julliard and Gunnar Klack.