19 avenue Kleber, 75116 Paris

The Peninsula Paris

Name: The Peninsula Paris
Address: 19 avenue Kleber, Paris, 75116, FR
Rating: 4.65

Hotel-restaurant 5-star with pool and spa in Paris

Presentation

The Peninsula Paris closes the perspective of Avenue Kléber with the quiet confidence of the great Haussmann façades. Blond, sculpted, adorned with flowers and ribbons of stone that twenty stonecutters spent months restoring, it seals off the 16th arrondissement just a few hundred meters from the Arc de Triomphe.

The building is more than a century old. Opened in 1908 under the name Hôtel Majestic, it saw George Gershwin compose An American in Paris in one of its rooms in 1928, before enduring the upheavals of the twentieth century: German occupation, UNESCO headquarters, and then the conference center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was in its salons, now the Bar Kléber, that Henry Kissinger signed the 1973 agreements ending the Vietnam War. It took until 2014 and the arrival of the Peninsula group, after four years of work, for the place to become a hotel again.

Pushing open the doors on the Avenue Kléber side, the eye first rises to the curved ceilings, restored with gold leaf, before dropping to the marble floor. A little farther on, in the second lobby, where breakfast is served, a Lasvit chandelier unfurls eight hundred sheets of blown glass, in tribute to the plane trees lining the avenue. The grooms in white jackets cross the hall almost silently.

Upstairs, the two hundred rooms and eighty-six suites favor pearl gray and cream tones. The bathrooms are in marble, with double sinks and deep bathtubs. Some suites, on the top floor, open onto a private terrace garden, with the city stretching out below. A digital tablet beside the bed controls the lighting and temperature, or orders breakfast without picking up the phone. The rates follow the same logic as the rest of the house: this is firmly in the top tier of Parisian palaces, and a night feels like a treat rather than a habit.

Breakfast is served in the Lobby or on the Terrasse Kléber, probably the largest covered terrace in the capital, as light filters through the glass roof and servers move between the tables with silver teapots. One occasional criticism from regulars concerns the soundproofing between the room and the corridor, which could still be improved, even if calm settles in as soon as the door closes on the outside world.

Six floors higher, L'Oiseau Blanc has taken its place beneath a glass roof, with a replica of the Nungesser and Coli biplane suspended above the tables. Chef David Bizet has earned two Michelin stars here, supported by pastry chef Anne Coruble. At nightfall, the view stretches from the Eiffel Tower to Sacré-Cœur, and Paris’s lights gradually replace the sky.

In the basement, across three levels created during the renovation, the spa spans 1,800 square meters, with a 20-meter indoor pool and several treatment cabins by ESPA.

One tip, almost in passing: book your table at L'Oiseau Blanc for lunch rather than dinner. The midday light over the rooftops of Paris alone is worth the trip.

Summary of a few positive reviews read on the Web

From the room, we could see the Eiffel Tower at night, a lovely surprise for a room that was not the highest category.
At reception, an employee named Yu Zhen took the time to answer all our questions about the neighborhood, with a smile.
Housekeeping came back to the room in the late afternoon; everything was spotless when we returned, even after requesting a late checkout.
The indoor pool is about twenty meters long, pleasant after a long day of walking between the Trocadéro and the Champs-Élysées.
At Bar Kléber, a waitress took the time to suggest a custom cocktail, outside the usual menu.
The Kléber metro station is about a five-minute walk away, convenient despite the neighborhood’s calm in the evening.