Prince Roland Bonaparte built his private mansion on the Avenue d'Iéna in 1896, commissioning a Beaux-Arts hôtel particulier of such imperial ambition — carved limestone caryatids, wrought-iron gates, a street facade of near-theatrical symmetry — that converting it into the Shangri-La Hotel Paris a century later demanded exceptional restraint. The property underwent a three-year, €250 million renovation completed in 2010, with Pierre-Yves Rochon leading the interiors across 100 rooms and suites spread over six floors. Rochon's approach keeps close to the building's Napoleonic bloodline — Roland was the Emperor's grandnephew — threading that lineage through lacquered Empire-style furniture with gilt-bronze mounts, deep-pile Savonnerie-style carpets, and rooms that alternate between powder-blue damask and warm blush panelling depending on aspect and floor. The bar, visible in the images, deploys dark mahogany millwork, lion's-head brass hardware, and trailing greenery against gold-striped walls beneath a branched gilt chandelier — a room that feels more like a botanist's private library than a hotel cocktail lounge. The pool level is the most quietly radical space: limestone colonnades frame a mosaic-tiled basin whose trompe-l'oeil sky ceiling and full-height garden windows dissolve any sense of subterranean enclosure, the whole room carrying the atmosphere of a Roman bath transplanted to the 16th arrondissement.

No travel notes provided yet.

No description provided yet.