The 1899 building at 55 Avenue de Saxe in Paris's 7th arrondissement spent most of its life as a telephone exchange — the Ségur central, one of the city's great switching hubs — before Karine Journo reimagined it as Sax Paris, LXR Hotels & Resorts' first French address, opening in 2025. The neo-Gothic facade, with its lion-head corbels, elaborate stucco ornamentation, and arched entrance glazed in a broad fanlight, gives no hint of its utilitarian past; it reads instead as pure Beaux-Arts civic ambition, the kind of building that expected to be looked at. Inside, the transformation is equally theatrical: The Galerie entrance hall lined with 200 mirrors and Baccarat chandeliers establishes an interior mood closer to a private hôtel particulier than a conventional lobby, while the inner courtyard pool — tiled in a checkerboard of deep blue marble, surrounded by ironwork screens painted black and white and set with striped banquettes — draws on something between Art Deco nightclub and Moorish garden. The 118 guestrooms are warmer and more intimate than the public spaces suggest they might be. Journo grounds them in honey-toned wood panelling, low brass-framed platform beds, boldly striped rugs in terracotta and ochre, and marble-topped side tables — materials that belong to a well-assembled Parisian apartment rather than a grand hotel. Above it all, the rooftop restaurant opens onto an unobstructed view of the Eiffel Tower, its curved timber pergolas and dusty-rose velvet seating softening a panorama that could otherwise overwhelm everything beneath it.

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