Number fifty-five avenue de Saxe was the Ségur telephone exchange in 1899. It is now Sax Paris, and the Eiffel Tower is caught in every one of its two hundred mirrors.
The Galerie, Sax Paris, 55 avenue de Saxe, 7ème
The building has been closed to the public for a century. The façade is still 1900. Caryatids hold up a cornice carved with the emblems of the Third Republic. Inside, the old switchboard halls have been stripped back to stone and then dressed again in Panda White marble and oak.
Karine Journo designed it for Compagnie de Phalsbourg. She calls the approach majesty restored, which sounds grander than what she has actually done. She has laid electric colour over noble material. Salmon. Golden brown. The particular muted orange of a well-used leather chair. The bones of the building hold the line and the furnishings misbehave.
The Galerie
You enter through what Journo has called The Galerie. Two hundred mirrors, angled and overlapping, and Baccarat crystal overhead. The mirrors are not a flourish. Journo sited them so that the Eiffel Tower, three streets to the north, turns up in reflection at every angle you look. You see it before you know you are looking for it.
The reception desk sits at the end of the gallery. Cast-bronze handles on the drawers. Rough-hewn marble on top. A velvet banquette where the old switchboard operators' desks once stood.
The bones of the building hold the line and the furnishings misbehave. Salmon. Golden brown. The particular muted orange of a well-used leather chair.
Sienna CaldwellThe rooms
One hundred and eighteen rooms and suites across seven floors. Custom oak furniture, cast-bronze handles, graphical carpeting underfoot. The bathrooms are Panda White marble with zebra-striped veining. Cognac leather on the banquettes. The palette is midcentury and the execution is quiet.
Three signature suites. The Studio is the smallest and the most private. The Winter Garden Suite opens onto plants and pale light. The Signature Suite runs across the top floor with a bar station for cocktail service and a chauffeur on call. In all three, the mirrors are angled again, this time for the Tower.
Kinugawa Rive Gauche
The rooftop belongs to Kinugawa, the Franco-Japanese house that has been on rue du Mont Thabor since 1979. David Maroleau runs the kitchen here. The menu is built around precision sushi and the kind of French technique that does not announce itself. The view is the Tower, unmediated this time. No mirror required.
Downstairs, Sax Restaurant and Bar sits under a ceiling Sto has painted in a single long sweep. A hand-blown Murano chandelier by Christian Pellizzari hangs at the centre of the room. The minibar in every guest room is stocked from La Grande Épicerie at Le Bon Marché, which is five minutes on foot. The tomato paste is better than the one at home.
Below
Sax Le Club runs under the street. Technogym, sauna, hammam, treatment rooms in the same Panda White marble. Studio Ravn planted Le Jardin above it, a heated pool and Jacuzzi set behind the façade with palm and acanthus and the sort of low lighting that makes six in the evening feel later than it is.
The 7th arrondissement does not usually open doors like this. The Rive Gauche hotels that came before Sax were discreet. Sax is not discreet. It is making an argument about what LXR wants to be in France, which is the louder wing of Hilton's luxury house. The answer here is very French, very loud, and very hard to miss at street level.
The verdict
The great Rive Gauche hotels whisper. Le Meurice, the Lutetia, the old palaces across the river. Sax does not whisper. It is brass and lacquer and mirrors that insist on the Tower. Book The Winter Garden Suite for the light and the pool at night for the rest. Come for a weekend and leave with a reservation for September.
Sax Paris opened in early 2026 as the French debut of LXR Hotels & Resorts. Standard rates from approximately €750 per night; signature suites from €3,400. Book through hilton.com.
Photography courtesy of Sax Paris — Original reporting by Wallpaper*