On 2 June, France added Cheval Blanc Paris to its list of palaces. It took the hotel five years. The building beneath it took sixteen.
Eight Quai du Louvre. The Seine runs past the front door, the Pont Neuf sits to the left, and the Louvre is a few minutes east. The hotel occupies the upper floors of the Samaritaine, the department store that closed in 2005 and reopened in 2021 after LVMH spent sixteen years and 750 million euros restoring its Art Nouveau and Art Deco frontage. Cheval Blanc took the top of the building and turned it toward the water.
The distinction
Palace is a French state title. Atout France created it in 2010 for a small group of hotels judged to sit above the five-star line, and the agency awards it slowly. On 2 June 2026 Cheval Blanc Paris joined the list. Its sister houses in Courchevel, Saint-Tropez and Saint-Barth already held the label. Paris was the one that made everyone wait.
The title measures more than marble. Inspectors weigh consistency, service, and the parts of a hotel a guest never sees. Five years is roughly how long a new house needs to prove those things night after night. The wait was the point.
Plénitude, the three-star dining room of Arnaud Donckele, Cheval Blanc Paris
The rooms
Seventy-two rooms and suites, which is small for a building this size. Peter Marino designed them. Every one looks out at the Seine or the rooftops, and none runs under seventy square metres. The larger suites hold contemporary art and the sort of quiet you pay for in the middle of a loud city.
Marino kept the palette warm and the volumes generous. Light comes off the river in the morning and moves across the walls through the day. From the higher floors the view collects the whole centre of Paris, from the Pont Neuf to the towers of Notre-Dame.
The tables
Six Michelin stars sit inside the house. Plénitude holds three of them. Arnaud Donckele runs the room on the first floor and builds his menus around sauces, treating each one the way a perfumer treats a blend. He earned the third star in 2022 and has kept it since.
Hakuba took a second star in early 2026. Takuya Watanabe cooks a kaiseki-sushi menu there, working alongside Donckele and the pastry chef Maxime Frédéric. On the seventh floor, Le Tout-Paris holds one star and opens onto a terrace that reaches from Notre-Dame to the Eiffel Tower. Langosteria brings Milanese cooking to the ground floor. Le Jardin, a hanging garden, opens to the sky through the summer.
Paris made the hotel wait five years for the word palace. The building beneath it waited sixteen.
The Splendid Edit
A treatment suite at the Dior Spa Cheval Blanc, Cheval Blanc Paris
The spa
The Dior Spa Cheval Blanc runs below the hotel. Six treatment suites, each dressed in a different corner of the Dior world, in white onyx and soft light. The pool measures thirty metres, the longest inside any hotel in Paris. During couture week it fills early, before the shows begin.
The verdict
Cheval Blanc Paris opened without the noise other palaces make. No grand lobby announcing itself, no scene at the door. It put the drama in the view, the food and the water, and left the rest quiet. Five years on, the state has agreed with the approach.
Book a Seine-facing suite. Take dinner on the seventh floor. Swim before the couture crowd arrives.
Cheval Blanc Paris received the Palace distinction from Atout France on 2 June 2026. Rooms start from approximately 1,700 euros per night. Reservations through chevalblanc.com.
Photography courtesy of Cheval Blanc Paris — © LVMH Hotel Management