1er Étage Marais

A guest house on the first floor

1er Étage Marais is not a hotel in the official sense but a guest house — five rooms on the first floor of a building at no. 38 rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, in the 4th arrondissement, on the stretch of the street nearest rue des Archives. It calls itself a luxury guest house. Because it is not classified by Atout France, the national body that issues hotel stars, it has no official category, and we give it no price band.

It belongs to 1er Étage, a small collection of three Paris addresses: this one, one at Opéra and one in SoPi-Montmartre.

How it works

There is no lobby to pass: guests come and go with personalised access codes. The rooms combine 1950s vintage furniture with contemporary design, by the house’s own description, and are air-conditioned. Breakfast is included in the stay and served in a lounge with a fireplace.

The format brings rules that most hotels do not set. Children under 12 are not accepted, and neither are pets.

The streets around rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie

The BHV Marais department store is three minutes away, and the National Archives, in the Hôtel de Soubise, four; their museum is free and closed on Tuesdays. The mahJ is four minutes away and rue des Rosiers six. That street is closed to traffic on Sundays, when it fills up, while many of its kosher shops close from Friday afternoon to Saturday evening for Shabbat. Hôtel de Ville (lines 1 and 11) and Rambuteau (line 11) are both five minutes on foot.

On the same street, the three-star Hôtel de la Bretonnerie (29 rooms) takes families and pets, which 1er Étage does not. For a very small address with official stars, the five-star Hôtel Dupond-Smith, three minutes away, has eight rooms. Within six minutes you will also find the four-star Hôtel 9Confidentiel, some of whose rooms were designed by Philippe Starck, and the three-star Hôtel Le Presbytère, in a listed former presbytery.