For over 20 years, Hotel du Quai Voltaire was our home in Paris. An enormous (by Paris standards) room, two huge french-door style windows opening onto a view straight into the Louvre, adorable staff that brought us the IHT or more recently NYT with breakfast which we enjoyed at our big round table fronting a window where we watched traffic on both the Quai and on the water. .
Then, in 2018, it was sold, staying open through 2019. Now closed for its metamorphosis into a luxury boutique hotel. We have lost touch with all connected with it and wonder what or if progress has been made and if there are plans for reopening.
Should you be walking on Quai Voltaire (between the Pont du Carrousel and Pont Royal( and can discern any information on what is going on at 19, Quai Voltaire, we would be eternally grateful. This was a very sweet address. We’re hopeful it will be again.
When I first read this, I thought you had lived at the hotel for 20 years! One of my fantasies has always been to live full-time in a nice hotel. I obviously was a big Eloise at the Plaza fan as a kid.
My sister and I stayed there in 2016. We had a tiny room with a squeaky floor, but we also had french-door style windows opening to the Seine and the Louvre. And yes the staff was lovely. We always ended our day with a nightcap in the lounge.
I hear you.
We always took a triple which gave us extra space. This place housed “unique” guests. One woman in her 90s stayed year round although her family had a spacious flat in the 1e. They begged her to move in but she preferred her little pied de terre. A couple from Chicago would book a triple for their two kids and nanny whom they would deposit there while they toured Europe for a month each year, knowing they would be looked after. Another tipped a deskman to store her sable during the summer in his locker.
Thank you, Phoenikia. It is the location of QV that we appreciated. Not only fabulous views from our windows but on the crossroads of bus ## 95, 39, 24, 27, 68 and 69 which whisked us in any direction. A 10 minute walk to St. Germain or Palais Royale neighborhoods.
Hotel Arcade is quite nice but we find transportation through the Madelaine area spare and therefore slow. And there is little in the immediate neighborhood that we use.
I was thinking of asking about Le Fumoir in another thread. We often passed it while walking home from Spring. It was always full of a seemingly convivial, but not noisy crowd.
Can you describe the caliber of the food and service?
Great for cocktails (they have quite an interesting collection of Martinis), excellent for holding work meetings in the large room in the back, and as I remember it, terrible for food.
It is mostly a work meeting place for publishers, journalists, writers, etc., by day and a successful cocktail bar by night.
They are set to re-open any day. I have also been curious about the renovation, having stayed there in 2016. I walked by a couple of weeks ago and it looked nearly finished. The entrance was open a crack and I was able to peer in. The reception desk seems to be in the same place and the small bar room off the lobby seemed intact. Otherwise, I would describe it as “bright” looking. In my experience, having lived through watching my favorite hotel, The Eldorado in the 17th, sold and transitioned from a unique bohemian haunt into a dreadfully “nice” bourgeois hotel for people with more money than taste, the feeling I received from my quick look in did not bode well.
HdQV is taking reservations for current month (March 2025) and beyond. Desk manager wrote that they will soon post room photos on the website. Rates will, as usual, depend on date and demand. Will be interesting to see “improvements” since so many 3* and above now sport such atrocious decor.
Looks open. Doesn’t seem to have an IG profile yet.
