Why you should experience Le Damantin in Paris, France.
Le Damantin is a refined mansion hotel where Champs-Élysées's Belle Époque character, Third Republic history, French decorative craftsmanship and the residential elegance of the Seine-facing Triangle d'Or converge inside the former home of the Ferry family.
Set along Rue Bayard near Cours Albert Ier and just steps from Avenue Montaigne, the hotel occupies a late nineteenth-century neo-Louis XIII residence whose red-brick and pale-stone elevations, slate roof, sculpted window pediments and wrought-iron balconies preserve the architectural character created for Charles Ferry. The property became Le Damantin under hoteliers Anne Foucher and Angel Mari, who developed the five-star hotel around the atmosphere of a private maison bourgeoise, while Jean-Philippe Nuel's studio conceived the 44 guestrooms and spa through a discussion between classical Parisian interiors and contemporary design. Rooms spanning 18 to 80 square meters incorporate Louis XVI-style fauteuils and bergères, Rubelli velvets and textiles from Lelièvre and Pierre Frey, with 14 accommodations overlooking combinations of the Seine, Eiffel Tower, Dôme des Invalides, Panthéon and Pont Alexandre III. The result is a hotel where nineteenth-century political history, accomplished French interior design and a rare relationship with the Seine remain embedded within the same private residence.
What you should know about Le Damantin.
Le Damantin is best known for occupying Maison Ferry at 1 Rue Bayard, a neo-Louis XIII residence constructed in the late 1880s for banker, prefect and politician Charles Ferry by architect Charles Frédéric Mewès, who later worked with César Ritz on the Hôtel Ritz Paris, Carlton Hotel London and Ritz London and Madrid. The site already possessed an artistic history before Mewès arrived: painter Léon Riesener, first cousin of Eugène Delacroix, acquired the parcel in 1846 and established a house and studio there, where sculptor Adèle d'Affry, Duchess of Castiglione-Colonna and better known as Marcello, rented an apartment in 1859 before the earlier building was replaced by the Ferry residence. Charles Ferry's brother Jules Ferry, twice president of the Council of Ministers and later president of the Senate, lived frequently at the house and died there on March 17, 1893, while Charles's son Abel Ferry, later a deputy for the Vosges, also made the residence his home. Anne Foucher and Angel Mari began developing the property into a hotel with financial backing connected to Audacia from December 2016, opening the five-star Le Damantin in 2019 after decades of hotel experience that included developing three Paris properties since 1994. Jean-Philippe Nuel's studio records the design project as a 44-key five-star commission completed with project-team member Béatrice Daude, interpreting the guestrooms through early twentieth-century Parisian residential culture and carrying the maison-de-maître concept into the subterranean spa.
Anne Foucher and Angel Mari extended Maison Ferry's residential style through materials and furnishings selected from established European decorative houses, pairing Louis XVI-style seating with Rubelli velvet and textiles from Lelièvre and Pierre Frey across guestrooms whose contemporary program remains grounded in the historic residence. Jean-Philippe Nuel developed the same historical discussion below ground in Le Damantin Spa, where a 14-meter swimming pool is illuminated by three chandeliers from Maison Lucien Gault and accompanied by a traditional sauna, two treatment cabins and a fitness room, using light and classical objects to connect the wellness spaces with the architecture above. Studio Jean-Philippe Nuel carried the concept into the hotel's original Le F restaurant through a winter garden, cabinet of curiosities and planted internal courtyard, while the current Damantin bar continues occupying the ground-floor rooms beside Cours Albert Ier with French wines and seasonal cocktails. Together, Anne Foucher, Angel Mari, Jean-Philippe Nuel, Rubelli, Pierre Frey, Lelièvre and Maison Lucien Gault connect Le Damantin's nineteenth-century architecture with a contemporary decorative program that treats Maison Ferry as a furnished Parisian residence rather than separating the hotel from the building's history.
How to fold Le Damantin into your trip.
Le Damantin works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing couture, scientific culture and the engineering systems that shaped the surrounding Seine-facing quarter.
Begin at Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, occupying the Second Empire hôtel particulier at 5 Avenue Marceau where the Yves Saint Laurent haute couture house moved in 1974 and where Saint Laurent worked for nearly three decades with six or seven studio collaborators and ateliers employing almost 200 tailors and seamstresses before announcing the end of his couture career in 2002. Continue to Palais de la Découverte, created by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Jean Perrin from André Léveillé's proposal for the 1937 International Exhibition, where more than two million people attended during its first six months before the temporary science exhibition became a permanent institution in 1938. Conclude at Musée des Égouts de Paris, where organized sewer excursions began during the 1867 Exposition Universelle and the surrounding network preserves the engineering legacy of Eugène Belgrand, whom Baron Haussmann appointed to Paris's water service in 1854 before Belgrand became director of Water and Sewers in 1867. The progression moves from the working rooms of French haute couture through Jean Perrin's public laboratory into Belgrand's subterranean engineering system, revealing the unusually concentrated history of design, science and technical invention surrounding Le Damantin.
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