Paris, France

Hôtel Monte Cristo Paris

Price per night from$239.00

Price information

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

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR220.91), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Paris page-turner

Setting

Literary Left Bank

Inspired by the global adventures of the Alexandre Dumas book, Hôtel Monte Cristo in Paris is a 19th-century odyssey. Each element of the Left Bank boutique hotel was inspired by the literary hero’s travels, including rooms that resemble far-flung boudoirs, decorated in custom tapestries, rich velvets, dark woods, fringe-hemmed divans and transporting art. Downstairs, a sauna and palm-dotted indoor pool conjure the tropics in the heart of Paris. After a day strolling the city, plot new adventures in the clubby Bar 1802, home to the largest selection of rums in Paris, including house-aged pours.

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Facilities

Photos Hôtel Monte Cristo Paris facilities

Need to know

Rooms

50, including four suites.

Check–Out

Noon, but flexible, subject to availability and a €30 fee. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £208.22 (€243), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €8.13 per person per night on check-out.

More details

Rates usually exclude breakfast (a Continental affair, with pastries, fruit, juices and cereal for €20 a person).

Also

The common areas are wheelchair accessible, and two Deluxe rooms have been adapted to accommodate wheelchairs.

At the hotel

Free WiFi throughout. In rooms: Nespresso coffee-maker, free bottled water, custom bath products.

Our favourite rooms

Though cosier than the larger room categories, the Boudoir rooms are the most transporting. Each is inspired by scenes in 19th-century literature and features velvet furniture, old books, custom curtains and moody vibes. Opt for one on the top floor, if possible.

Poolside

The heated indoor pool is family friendly and tucked away below the lobby.

Spa

There’s a sauna off the pool, and in-room massages can be arranged.

Packing tips

Bring along plenty of books, to fit in with the inspiring literary theme.

Also

There’s an eminently Instagrammable curiosity cabinet in the lobby filled with bright taxidermied tropical birds and a snake.

Pet‐friendly

Small dogs are allowed for €15 a night; the hotel provides food bowls. See more pet-friendly hotels in Paris.

Children

All ages welcome. The hotel can arrange for a babysitter with 12 hours' notice and extra beds can be added to Deluxe rooms for €30 a night.

Food and Drink

Photos Hôtel Monte Cristo Paris food and drink

Dress Code

Don something suitably slinky when bound for Bar 1802 – you'll want to fit in amid the cocktail connoisseurs checking out the ever-changing rum menu.

Hotel restaurant

There’s no restaurant onsite, but you’re in Paris: you won’t go hungry.

Hotel bar

Bar 1802 is the biggest rum bar in Europe, with an on-site distillery, 40 seasonally changing rum cocktails and a growing collection of what will eventually be 500 bottles of assorted rums. The setting is inspired by the 19th century, lit with dim lamps and candles.

Last orders

Breakfast is available in the bar from 7 to 10.30am, tea from 11.30 to 6pm, and the bar serves from 6pm until 1am.

Room service

Breakfast can be delivered to the room from 7am until noon.

Location

Photos Hôtel Monte Cristo Paris location
Address
Hôtel Monte Cristo Paris
20-22 Rue Pascal
Paris
75005
France

Hotel Monte Cristo Paris is near the Panthéon, in Paris’ 5th Arrondissement.

Planes

France’s main international airport, Charles de Gaulle, is a 45-minute drive, with flights available from throughout the world. For domestic travel, Orly Airport is 50 minutes away.

Trains

The Eurostar terminal at Gare du Nord is about 30 minutes by car.

Automobiles

Driving in Paris is best left to the hardened professionals, but those who choose to hire a car can use the public car park three minutes from the hotel for €45 a day.

Worth getting out of bed for

Paris is meant for walking, and one of the best ways to take it all in is Les Berges de Seine, a two-kilometre stretch of riverfront on the Left Bank running west from the Musée d’Orsay, with benches, climbing walls, art installations and other Parisian amusements. Near the hotel, the Jardin des Plantes is the city's primary botanical garden, with colourful, seemingly overgrown rows of flowers and assorted plants. Less crowded than the nearby Jardin du Luxembourg, the gardens also hold a gem museum and a museum of natural history. Some of the city’s most beautiful tourist destinations are a quick subway ride from the hotel, including the Ile de la Cité. A few blocks from there you'll find Saint-Chapelle, with its stunning stained-glass windows, between the left and right banks. For art, plan a full day at The Louvre, jockeying for time with the Mona Lisa, or devote an afternoon to the Impressionists at the Musée d'Orsay. West of the city, atop the Bois de Boulogne, the modern Louis Vuitton Foundation rises from nature like a giant glass ship transporting cargo of contemporary art. There's an impressive exhibition calendar, and a permanent collection of works by Koons, Basquiat, Kelly and others.

Local restaurants

A short stroll from the hotel, the ultra-casual Foyer Vietnam serves excellent Vietnamese dishes, including spring rolls and noodles. Channel a bit of French bayou spirit with brunch at Nola in Canal Saint-Martin (72 Quai de Jemmapes). The lively bistro puts a Cajun spin on its dishes, including duck with waffles and an eggs Benedict with spicy crab. It’s worth the wait to dine at Le Comptoir du Relais, near Odéon. The casual brasserie serves stunning dishes that change daily based on the whims of chef Yves Camdeborde. Rest assured, you’re in good hands, but plan for seafood and plenty of cheese.

Local bars

Paris is packed with sidewalk bistros that are ideal for an apéritif. The Ritz's legendary Bar Hemingway has been an expat favorite since the days when the Lost Generation's boldest names – including Fitzgerald and Hemingway – would settle in for drinks and chats. Though recently renovated, the space maintains its old-world clubby charm and fabulous daiquiri. Head to the Marais for craft cocktails and a stellar whiskey and sherry selection at the cheekily named Sherry Butt (named for the aging barrels), where lights are low and the setting is a cosy respite from a busy day of strolling.

Reviews

Photos Hôtel Monte Cristo Paris reviews
Damian Barr

Anonymous review

By Damian Barr, Writer and salonnier

Each of my favourite hotels tells a unique story and invites you to be a character in it. Checking in is a ‘choose your adventure’ tale – at the Savoy in London I imagine I have an assignation with Bosie while Oscar is out of town, at the Algonquin in New York I’m savouring the first martini of lunch while I wait for Dorothy Parker and pals to join me at the infamous Round Table. The Hotel Monte Cristo in Paris conjures the grandly mischievous spirit of Alexander Dumas and his epic adventure story – for a weekend you too can frolic in the 19th century (with all the benefits of 21st-century finesse and fewer worries about the plague).

Your adventure begins as soon as you saunter into the neighbourhood. The hotel is on a mercifully quiet street in the fifth arrondissement, the still-very-much-beating-heart of Le Quartier Latin and infinitely preferable to opt into the buzz than try to sleep off a hangover in the midst of it. One of the city’s oldest areas, it would still feel familiar to Dumas and his contemporary, Victor Hugo. Neighbourhood highlights include Café Lea on the corner if you want to revisit your student days and read Sartre ostentatiously over a beer; nearby Café Saint Menard for bistro staples and casual art-deco cool or take a seat outside Poissonnerie Saint-Medard and enjoy six oysters and a glass of Chardonnay for €9.50.

The quartier’s mostly cobbled streets run from this stronghold of the Sorbonne right to the Seine where it’s louche, literary spirit is personified in the world’s finest bookshop: Shakespeare and Company. This favoured haunt of famous writers – from Baldwin to Burroughs; Nin to Dumas – faces Notre Dame. The shop invited me to give a reading from my new book and I arrived the morning after the great fire. Smoke hung in the air along with sweet spring lilacs. Fellow writer Adam Biles and I began the night with a recitation of Hugo who made the cathedral the star of his Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Count of Monte Cristo is one of Shakespeare and Co’s evergreen titles – not bad for a novel published in 1844.

A thoughtful 19th-century chinoiserie aesthetic with well-chosen antiques stops it this relatively new retreat feeling box-fresh. As you walk in you’re greeted by a wall of stuffed birds, each staring beadily from an ebony-black perch. They’re fantastically colourful and somehow even more exotic described with their French names. The ibis rouge is a leggy scarlet lady, the touraco de livingstone is a jealous green courtier and the egret blanche is a pious nun stooped in prayer. 

Dumas stands behind reception (in oil painting form; happily they drew the line at making a concierge don a wig and breeches – you can take a theme too far). He, the grandson of an aristocrat and a Haitian slave who became a general of Napoleon’s empire as well as a celebrated scribe. Like Byron, Dumas embodied the true spirit of the Romantic era in his work and life. Says the hotel brochure: ‘the recklessness, the fertility and unreasonableness of this man were phenomenal…his ideas, his passions, his journeys.’ 

On the desk, a handsome leather-bound volume of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo leans against an antique pharmacy urn marked ‘opiate’. Drugs feature heavily in the novel’s Byzantine plot, where a man is wrongly imprisoned before escaping and making a fortune in the Orient then returning to take his revenge. We can imagine Dumas took his research seriously (as all writers should).

The hotel has the feel of several townhouses smooshed together; each room named for a character from the novel (a book so long they could open a chain). We were in Mercedes, one of several love interests. Mr Smith and I had booked a Boudoir room but, due to a mix-up, were immediately upgraded to a junior suite. More such mix-ups, please.

The boudoir was shower-only though it looked big enough for two. The junior suite has a bath you can fit three in. Dumas would approve. Exotic plants – rubber and fig – sprout from heavy Chinoiserie pots throughout the hotel lending it all a leafy feel, and the rooms are equally lush with greenery. 

From our window we could see the top of the dome of the pantheon, the great tomb where France inters its greatest writers. In 2002 Dumas’ ashes were placed here – transferred in a coffin covered with a blue velvet cloak embroidered with ‘One for all, all for one’, the motto of his three other famous creations. Here he rests alongside Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo and others. It’s a five minute walk from the hotel and the crypt is a cool oasis of contemplative calm in a city short on quiet. I like to imagine them all arguing over their works for all eternity.

All the hotel furniture is fringed or velvet or both, encouraging constant lounging. An in-room espresso machine, discreet flatscreen and air-conditioning that actually works are welcome modern comforts. The cosmetics are all amber-coloured and spicy, almost smoky, and spa quality. For a small hotel it has a surprisingly long lap pool in the basement with a sauna overlooking it – ideal for recovering from Parisian excess.

Continental breakfast –  the usual suspects but all fresh and good – is served in the bar until 10.30am or you can order it to your room. When it’s not serving breakfast the 1802 bar is awash in rum. Or, more precisely, ‘rhum’ from exotic locales including Haiti, Martinique and Guadeloupe. Classics are served substituted with said spirit and they work very well – the negroni with Mount Gay black was a moody triumph. Sipping rhum among palms in the seductive half-light you might almost be in another place and time. A time when clinking glasses with Dumas himself would not be out of the question…

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Price per night from $239.00