Hôtel Plaza Athénée

No Paris facade is more instantly recognisable than the Plaza Athénée's: eight storeys of Haussmannian stone dressed in scarlet awnings and window boxes of red geraniums, facing the couture houses of Avenue Montaigne since 1913. The hotel and the fashion district grew up together—Dior established itself a few doors away—and that relationship still defines the clientele, the shop windows and the sense that the eighth arrondissement's most glamorous theatre plays out in the lobby.

Rooms move between classical Louis XVI and Art Deco registers, many with balconies over the avenue; the most coveted upper-floor suites frame the Eiffel Tower straight down the street. La Cour Jardin, the ivy-walled interior courtyard, becomes one of the city's prettiest terraces in summer and an ice rink's worth of charm in winter with its red parasols swapped for lights. Service, under the Dorchester Collection, is polished to palace standard.

The gastronomic restaurant continues a lineage that famously included Alain Ducasse's plant-forward era, alongside the timelessly fashionable Le Relais Plaza brasserie, a galerie for afternoon tea and an intimate bar. The Dior Spa downstairs extends the couture connection into treatment rooms. For fashion-week Paris, or simply the fantasy version of the city, the Plaza Athénée remains definitive.