Paris, France

Hôtel Balzac

Price per night from$638.97

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR550.40), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Hôtel Balzac Photos

Style

Guest of Honoré

Setting

Skirting the Champs-Élysées

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Timeless sophistication sets the narrative at Hôtel Balzac, a historic Haussmannian address steps from the Champs-Élysées with serious literary cred. In its latest chapter, interiors by design studio Festen evoke hushed Thirties glamour, and a Japanese-inspired spa makes a soothing plot twist. Mostly, though, days follow a classic Parisian arc: croque monsieurs in the lounge, followed by champagne cocktails in the speakeasy-style bar. And in some suites, there’s a spectacular epilogue: the Eiffel Tower up-close and twinkling, Paris’s rooftops unfurling in between.

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Facilities

Photos Hôtel Balzac facilities

Need to know

Rooms

58, including 24 suites.

Check–Out

Noon; check-in is at 3pm. Both are flexible, on request and subject to availability. For late check-out, there’s a fee starting from 50 per cent of the nightly rate.

More details

Rates are room only, but an à la carte breakfast is available in the Lounge for €15 to €44.

Also

Three rooms have been adapted for guests with limited mobility, and phones modified for vision- or hearing-impaired guests are available on request. The hotel has a platform lift at the entrance.

At the hotel

Laundry service and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: TV with Chromecast, Bluetooth speaker, air-conditioning, Sjöstrand coffee machine, tea-making kit, cocktail kit, minibar, free glass-bottled water, bathrobes, slippers and Diptyque bath products.

Our favourite rooms

Swing for one of the suites on the fifth or sixth floor for gasp-prompting views of the Eiffel Tower from your private balcony. There are connecting options, too, if you’re coming en famille.

Spa

With its slatted wood walls and woven sudare screens, Spa Ikoï picks up the thread of Japenese inspiration that runs throughout the hotel. Treatments combine traditional practices including kobido and shiatsu with organic French-made products by Omnisens. After a bamboo massage or rhythmic facial, double down on your decompression with a sauna and plunge pool stint. There’s also a fitness room with NOHRD equipment and free weights. The spa is open daily from 7am to 10pm.

Packing tips

The entirety of La Comédie Humaine might set you over your luggage weight limit — if you fancy doing your literary homework, opt for Modeste Mignon, Balzac’s novel inspired by the countess that once called this address home, instead.

Also

You're staying with high-flyers at Hôtel Balzac — the roof is home to an insect hotel and birdhouses, placed to promote urban biodiversity.

Pet‐friendly

Small pets are welcome in all room types for a nightly fee of €50 each. See more pet-friendly hotels in Paris.

Children

All ages are welcome. Baby cots can be added for free to all rooms except Boudoir and Superior Rooms. In suites with sofa-beds, kids under 12 stay free. Babysitting is available with at least two days’ notice, from €150 for three hours.

Food and Drink

Photos Hôtel Balzac food and drink

Top Table

Claim the caramel-hued velvet sofa facing the fireplace — then settle in to read by hazy lamplight or plan your next literary salon.

Dress Code

Low-key Parisian luxe.

Hotel restaurant

The Lounge is less a formal restaurant, more the sort of place to while away the hours with games of piquet or a vintage paperback. Armchairs and sofas cluster in lamplit corners or around the fireplace — pick one, then order a truffle croque monsieur or Caesar salad from the menu of comforting bistro fare.

Hotel bar

Sultrily dimmed lights and burl-wood panelling give Le Bar, set in an alcove-like room off the Lounge, the air of an art deco speakeasy. Cocktails, named for Honoré de Balzac’s works, are suitably worldly — the signature, La Comédie Humaine, matches Japanese shochu with kiwi, lemon, jasmine syrup and matcha. Pair with caviar, Espelette pepper-laced lobster rolls and a plate of macarons for maximum Parisian indulgence.

Last orders

Breakfast is served at the Lounge from 7am to 11am; the main food menu is available from noon to 11pm. Le Bar is open from 7am to midnight.

Room service

You can order dishes to your room round the clock.

Location

Photos Hôtel Balzac location
Address
Hôtel Balzac
6 Rue Balzac
Paris
75008
France

Slip down a quiet rue off the Champs-Élysées to find Hôtel Balzac, a historic stay in the French capital’s 8th arrondissement.

Planes

The hotel is around a 45-minute drive from both Paris Charles de Gaulle and Paris Orly Airports. Staff can arrange airport transfers on request (€175 for up to three passengers, €195 for up to six).

Trains

It’s around a half-hour drive from both Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est. Gare Saint-Lazare, Gare d’Austerlitz and Gare Montparnasse are all also within three kilometres of the hotel. Staff can arrange station transfers on request (€125 for up to three passengers, €135 for up to six). For shuttling around the city, Charles de Gaulle–Étoile (on Lines 1, 2 and 6) is your local Métro stop, a five-minute walk away.

Automobiles

The hotel doesn’t have a private carpark, but there’s covered public parking nearby for €50 a day with a free valet service available.

Worth getting out of bed for

Even if you’re not lured in by the glitzy boutiques of the Champs-Élysées and the Golden Triangle, the window displays are often works of art worth ooh-ing over. The Arc de Triomphe is a 10-minute stroll away; set off along the Champs-Élysées in the other direction to reach the Grand Palais, whether to check out the latest exhibition or just to practise your Chanel runway-ready strut under the spectacular steel-and-glass ceiling. In Parc Monceau, meander through the romantic gardens where the muse often struck Monet. In the 8th, you’ll pass endless museums and galleries en flânant — there’s centuries’ worth of masterpieces on display at Musée Jacquemart-André, a Belle Époque townhouse turned museum and art gallery. Or wind your way south into the 16th for your contemporary art fix at Palais de Tokyo.

Local restaurants

Never mind Narnia, we want our secret doors leading to fine-dining restaurants: happily, you can slip straight from Hôtel Balzac’s lobby into Restaurant Pierre Gagnaire, a longstanding star of Paris’s haute-cuisine scene. For the classic Parisian pavement terrace experience — elegant seafood served under a scalloped awning on a pretty Haussmannian corner — head for Brasserie La Lorraine. Book ahead for bijou udon spot Kisin, where nourishing bowls of handmade noodles are topped with authentic Japanese ingredients.

Local cafés

Make for Maison Lucie, your local boulangerie, for morning croissants on the go. At artisan coffee spot Café Nuances, pick up the coveted specialty, the rose latte.

Local bars

This close to the Champs-Élysées, Hôtel Balzac’s bar is the move for an intimate cocktail date. But oenophiles in need of a mid-shop pit stop should make a beeline for the foodhall in Galeries Lafayette, where it’s natural wine bar Yard Champs Élysées to the rescue with fresh oysters and a glass of something on point.

Reviews

Photos Hôtel Balzac reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this storied hotel in France and unpacked their Diptyque scents and Seine snaps, a full account of their landmark-gazing break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Hôtel Balzac in Paris… 

Once upon a time, Honoré de Balzac gave his lover a house on the spot that Hôtel Balzac now occupies. It’s a quiet corner of two pretty rues moments from the Champs-Élysées — as wooing goes, it’s elite work.

Design powerhouse Festen might have skipped forward a century for the hotel’s latest makeover, with muted interiors channelling art deco and Japonisme influences, but l’amour is still in the air. Read your billets-doux over café-style dishes in the fire-warmed lounge, then make a date with the meditative Japanese spa (couples' treatments, very much available). Higher-floor suites have Eiffel Tower views to weaken the sturdiest of knees. And in the shadows of the clandestine bar, it’s easy to imagine Bergman and Bogart clinking champagne coupes. As time goes by, this Parisian pied-à-terre only becomes more of a heart-stealer.

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Price per night from $611.80

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