Why you should experience Hôtel Les Deux Girafes in Paris, France.
Hôtel Les Deux Girafes is an inventive four-star hotel where Saint-Ambroise's manufacturing inheritance, artisan culture, creative independence and enduring talent for reinvention converge within a nineteenth-century furniture factory recast around its industrial fabric.
Set along Passage Beslay near Avenue Parmentier and just steps from Square Maurice-Gardette, the hotel opened in 2018 after Jérôme Roy of AR Architecture and architect-designers Sandrine Legret and Philippe Janssens of Itak Architectes reworked the former workshop through exposed brick, metal-framed glazing, timber, workshop references and a central planted patio. Artists Anna Golics Cottet and Olivier Thomas of Anathomie created the property's two giraffes, including a life-size wire sculpture rising from the patio and the animated figure above the entrance whose presence gave the hotel its name. Alcali developed the visual character and wayfinding through engraving techniques and typography conceived to echo craftsmanship, while 90 percent of the hotel's 34 rooms were arranged around the vegetation-filled courtyard. The result is a hotel where Roy, Legret, Janssens, Anathomie and Alcali turned the physical memory of furniture production into a collaborative work of contemporary Parisian design.
What you should know about Hôtel Les Deux Girafes.
Hôtel Les Deux Girafes is best known for opening in 2018 inside a late nineteenth-century furniture factory after Jérôme Roy of AR Architecture and Sandrine Legret and Philippe Janssens of Itak Architectes rehabilitated 1,400 square meters while deliberately preserving the site's manufacturing identity. Alexandre Rondepierre developed the hotel with his wife and the architectural team, while Anathomie artists Anna Golics Cottet and Olivier Thomas created both the life-size wire giraffe in the patio and the mechanical illuminated giraffe above the entrance, transforming two commissioned artworks into the property's name and defining visual signature. Alcali translated the same industrial narrative into the hotel's graphic character and signage through engraving techniques associated with craftsmanship, creating another authored layer linking the former furniture workshop with its contemporary use. In 2019, the City of Paris identified Alexandre Rondepierre as the hotelier, Jérôme Roy and Itak as the designers and specifically praised the project's treatment of the site's industrial past when Hôtel Les Deux Girafes won the Hotels, Cafés and Restaurants category of the fifth Paris Shop & Design awards. The former furniture factory, 1,400-square-meter reconstruction, multidisciplinary architectural team, commissioned Anathomie sculptures, Alcali graphic program and Paris Shop & Design recognition establish Hôtel Les Deux Girafes as a documented design collaboration built from the material history of its original workshop.
The hotel's culinary history adds a second creative lineage through Le Beslay, which opened under Italian chef Antonella Finelli after a career that included La Grande Cascade, Divellec and Lucas Carton before Fabrice Giraud subsequently assumed the kitchen and repositioned the restaurant in 2022. Giraud trained in Alain Ducasse's kitchens, worked internationally in Turkey and China and previously led Maison Blanche, bringing a markedly international professional trajectory to a restaurant structured around an open kitchen and seasonal sourcing. Le Beslay itself extends the architectural style through 100 square meters of former industrial space, where timber, metal and peacock-blue velvet surround contemporary art exhibitions and a glass floor reveals archaeological pieces beneath the entrance. Alexandre Rondepierre, Antonella Finelli, Fabrice Giraud and the continuing exhibition program extend the collaborative authorship established by AR Architecture, Itak, Anathomie and Alcali, allowing architecture, art, graphic design and gastronomy to remain connected to the property's industrial origin.
How to fold Hôtel Les Deux Girafes into your trip.
Hôtel Les Deux Girafes works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing the manufacturing, labor history and artistic reinvention that have repeatedly reshaped the 11th Arrondissement.
Begin at Atelier des Lumières, where brothers Jacques François Alexandre and Hilaire Pierre Plichon established the Chemin-Vert foundry in 1835 to manufacture high-quality cast-iron components for the navy and railway industries, before Culturespaces rediscovered the vacant complex in 2013 and opened its digital art center on April 13, 2018, drawing 1.2 million people during its first year. Continue to Maison des Métallos, where an 1881 brass-instrument factory later became the internationally recognized Couesnon company, the first instrument manufacturer to introduce steam power into its factories, before the economic crisis of 1929 contributed to the company's departure and the CGT acquired the building in 1936 as its metalworkers' membership expanded from 10,000 to 250,000 during the Popular Front. Conclude at Cirque d'Hiver, where Jacques-Ignace Hittorff completed a 42-meter-diameter, 20-sided circus in only eight months before Napoléon III inaugurated it on December 11, 1852, and where Jules Léotard introduced the flying trapeze to a public audience in 1859 before giving his surname to the garment associated with his performances. The progression moves from nineteenth-century iron production through an instrument factory that became a center of organized labor into the performance architecture where Léotard changed circus history, revealing the culture of making, experimentation and reinvention surrounding Hôtel Les Deux Girafes.
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