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 (EUR331.82), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Say yé-yé to your chic home from home in the 8th, Norman Hôtel Paris, which has all the swing of the city in the Sixties, but with more modern comforts, plus larger than usual lodgings, some with cocktail-ready terraces. If you’re thinking ‘qui est Norman?’, well he’s American mid-century graphic artist Norman Ives: his typographic prints hang throughout, patterns have been adopted as motifs, and his artworks have influenced the colourways. And you get two cultural figureheads here, with noted Parisian chef Thiou crafting her cult Thai dishes in the kitchen. All in all, a gaily era-hopping stay that’s not your average Norm’.
Noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm. And mobile check-in is available too.
Prices
Double rooms from £312.58 (€365), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €10.73 per person per night on check-out.
More details
Rates don’t include breakfast (from €18 a guest).
Also
Some Superior rooms have been adapted for guests with reduced mobility and have grab bars, roll-in showers and other accessibility features. And reception can lend a phone with special features to guests with reduced vision.
At the hotel
Concierge, newspapers on request, charged laundry service, and free WiFi. In rooms: TV, Bluetooth speaker, air-conditioning, Nespresso machine, tea-making kit, minibar, free bottled water, bathrobes and slippers, and organic bath products.
Our favourite rooms
You don’t need to know the work of mid-century American graphic artist Norman Ives to appreciate the hotel’s aesthetic – indeed, his portfolio, from coolly clean logos to complex typographical abstracts, which he created for all manner of eminent art establishments, was criminally undersung in his lifetime. But, a little research adds cool context to the sage, mustard and burgundy colour palette, mid-century shaping and pattern motifs throughout. From the Corner Junior Suite upwards, there’s a balcony or terrace with views over the surrounding cobbled streets; but the two-bedroom penthouse Sky Suite has an extra flourish with a stargazing sky dome placed over the master bedroom’s king-size.
Spa
The hotel’s working on its wellness space, which will open in February 2024. But our bodies are ready for naturopathic treatments from gentle skincare brand Omnisens, soothing plunge pool dips and spells in the sauna.
Packing tips
Call on all the Sixties masters: Cardin, Courrèges, Pucci…
Also
The minibars have sweet treats from Maison Plisson (an épicerie owned by the Norman’s hotel group) and custom spirits made in collaboration with La Distillerie de Paris.
If your darling is a fan of the typographic arts of the Fifties and Sixties then they’ll have a ball here. Less precocious little ones may be less enthused.
Suave and Sixties: either suit up or wear something with some wiggle.
Hotel restaurant
Chef Thiou (nee Apiradee Thirakomen) has earnt a cult following for serving and popularising top-tier Thai cuisine in Paris, having served brimming-with-flavour plates for decades at Les Bains Douches and then at her self-named eatery. Her devotees will likely turn up in droves for her signature prawn ravioli, scampi and basil nem rán (spring rolls) and ‘crying tiger’ beef with carrot and papaya salad, but lucky guests of the Norman get first dibs on those, Eastern-inflected French dishes and tropical desserts. And Thiou might even join you for a drink and a chat. Breakfast is Continental with some cooked dishes (eggs Benedict, mixed-grill sausages, avo on toast), but you could start your day with Thai tea and crêpes in condensed milk.
Hotel bar
There’s a gallic Mad Men (Hommes Fous?) feel to the retro bar, with its sage-velvet sofas, dark-marble counters and sleek woods. But drinks are more exotic, following in the restaurant’s adventurous footsteps with Thai flavourings. Try the Flower Champagne with Louis Roederer, a dash of vanilla-infused vodka, yuzu liqueur and lemon; or the sweet-savoury Pandan Smash (pandan leaf-infused gin, elderflower, coconut, coriander and Thai bitters). There’s also a selection of French wines, fragrant teas and fresh juices.
Last orders
Breakfast is from 7.30am to 10.30am, lunch from noon to 2.30pm and dinner from 7pm to 10.30pm. Drinks pour from 11am till midnight.
Norman Hôtel Paris sits on Rue Balzac, amid a salon of streets, with neighbouring Rues Châteaubriand and Lord Byron. But more noteworthy is its closeness to the Champs-Élysées, just steps away, with the Arc de Triomphe on your doorstep.
Planes
Both Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports are around an hour’s drive away. Return transfers can be arranged for €340.
Trains
For Eurostar arrivals, the Gare du Nord is around a 30-minute drive away. The nearest Métro stop is Charles de Gaulle – Étoile, a five-minute walk away, which sits on the A, 1, 2, and 6 lines.
Automobiles
Driving in Paris requires a certain savoir-faire that even most Parisians don’t possess. Literally sidestep the stress by choosing to go on foot. Otherwise, there’s a valet service and private parking for €50 a day.
Worth getting out of bed for
You can hardly get more Parisian than Norman Hôtel’s enviable address on Rue Balzac. Well, we could try by telling you that the Arc de Triomphe is almost a baguette poke away from your doorstep (well maybe if you have quite a long reach). The big-name boutiques and Ladurée temptations of the Champs-Élysées are laid out in front of you; follow it down and you’ll reach the Grand and Petit palais, Place de Concorde, the Tuileries and Louvre. And from there you can cross the Seine to Musée d'Orsay or the Île de la Cité and Notre Dame. Due south of the hotel, down Grand Avenue George V, you’ll hit the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac (for indigenous art from around the world), and a little-known landmark called the Eiffel Tower… And other nearby musées to muse over focus on Yves Saint Laurent, historic wearables and accessories (in the Palais Galliera) and the sea (at Palais de Chaillot). For an evening culture fix, try arthouse Cinema Balzac or Lido 2’s camp cabaret revues.
Local restaurants
It’s more of a book months in advance kinda place, but you’re within drop-in distance of Pierre Gagnaire’s famous three-Michelin-star-awarded eatery. Cheap eats these are not, but with a deep respect for local fishers, gardeners, butchers and winemakers on display, a sense of reverent ceremony to proceedings and staunchly excellent cooking, the price tag is as easy to swallow as the buttery Brittany lobster or duck with peach sorbet. Elegant sister stay Château des Fleurs is home to chic Korean eatery Oma, where the chef Ji-Hye Park’s re-works her childhood favourites into signatures: a comforting rice bowl of beef, egg, seaweed and sesame; and mulhué, a chilled spicy broth with fish. And enjoy ethical seafood – lobster and caviar, platters of langoustine and pink shrimp, spider crab, squid fricassée – at La Lorraine, preferably on its sizable terrace.
Local cafés
Hot chocolate and a Mont Blanc feels all the more refined when you’re taking them at Belle Époque tea room Angelina, while Café le Jardin in Le Petit Palais is more modern yet equally refined, and Monsieur Dior in the Galerie Dior is a fittingly stylish lunch spot in between shopping hauls.
Local bars
Gentlemen 1919 emulates a Prohibition-era speakeasy, also incorporating a barbers and shoe-shiner so you can look your sharpest before cocktail-sipping in the bar and (optional) Cuban cigar-puffing sessions in the fumoir. And, maybe you came to Paris to escape British boozers, but Sir Winston is a svelter take on one. Although you can still get a pint of Guinness and a shawarma if you really must.
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 design-legend-led hotel by the Champs-Élysées and unpacked their sketchbooks and rolled-up prints, a full account of their chi-chi break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Norman Hôtel Paris…
Norman may not seem the most chic of names for a hotel, but stick it in a literary rue leading off the Champs-Élysées, run everything through a retro filter, add a dash of the Don Drapers and saturate with Sixties cool and you get Norman Hôtel Paris (which you know you read in a sexier accent). Norman himself is Norman Ives, an American graphic artist from the mid-century (undersung yet worthy of legendary status), whose work proves a stylish touchpoint for dressing walls, borrowing colour palettes and providing psychedelic typographic patterns echoed in the carpets and more. A living legend takes charge in the kitchen – chef Thiou has already won Paris over with her Thai-French fare and so guests can feel quite smug about being first in the queue for her flavourful signatures. And with suites more sizable than most in the city, some with terraces for cocktail hour, we have to say that the Norm’ here is really quite extraordinary.
