Forget The Ritz: Inside the Paris hotel loved by Madonna and Charli
Paris, 2am: the windmill outside the Moulin Rouge slows to a stop. Surely that is the signal the party’s over. However, a two-minute walk away, another neon sign lures Pigalle’s party set. The letters spelling out ‘Bus Palladium’ climb vertically up the side of a 12-storey building on Rue Pierre Fontaine.
Paris, 2:30am: in the basement of Bus Palladium, Parisian nightlife is in full flow. Like the set of a Netflix coming-of-age drama, the room has been dressed with a gold streamer curtain and glitter balls, and there’s a room made entirely of mirrors.
The vibe is luxe, but not snooty. The DJ’s turntables are on the dancefloor, rather than lording above it, and the crowd is packed in tight enough that on a Thursday night (or should that be Friday morning) I have to muscle for space. Everyone’s older – thirties and up – stylish as hell, and have absolutely no intention of going home.
Bus Palladium has some serious credentials: Madonna launched her Confessions II album here during Paris Fashion Week this past June, two months after the hotel, restaurant and club opened. Charli xcx showed up for moral support.
Bus Palladium: Paris hotel loved by Dali
Madge was following in some legendary footsteps. The Beatles, Mick Jagger and Serge Gainsbourg were regulars at Bus Palladium during its heyday in the 1960s and 70s, until the venue shuttered in 2022 following financial difficulties. Salvador Dali was another fan: he’d dine there with his pet ocelot (terrified diners were told the fearsome animal was a painted cat, although the joke ended when it ripped apart a priceless piece of art).
Refashioned as a design hotel, Bus Palladium 2.0 is the newest attraction in Paris’ hippest nightlife quarter. Roleplay as one of the rockstars who shaped this building by ordering a Naked & Famous from the cocktail list before retiring to a bedroom that’s designed like a recording studio. You could be in the city centre pad of Jagger himself.
Like sleeping in a recording studio
In the rooms, analogue radios with chunky dials offer four curated playlists. Forget logging onto an app: this is entertainment the old fashioned way. The playlist of classic French songs will suit you if you feel like getting down to some hanky-panky, or turn the dial to the electro bangers playlist – featuring Daft Punk, Justice and Vitalic, naturally – if the mood is more dancing in a robe with a glass of indie liqueur from the mini bar.
Studio KO, the architectural firm who oversaw the redesign, elevates the hotel to a level befitting a rock star. The bedrooms, with padded corkboard walls and professional-grade speakers, make you feel like you’re sleeping in a recording studio. The playful streak continues via 1970s-coded mottled glass that divides the bedroom and bathroom, encouraging guests to become their own voyeur if they choose to leave the curtain open, revealing a sightline from the bedroom to bathroom.
Corduroy curtains are made using the same material as the staff uniforms from the 70s, one of the best examples of Bus Palladium’s commitment to textural clashes; also in the bedrooms, harsh steel walls meet powder-pink carpeting; framed on those metal walls are paintings of couples displayed in wooden frames, like you’d find at grandma’s house.
Paris and an intimidatingly cool vibe
Even boring dinner guests are coerced onto the dancefloor: there’s free club entry if you book into the restaurant or the hotel. And the simplicity of stepping from dining room to nightclub injects a sense of anticipation into dinner. While the queue builds outside on the street, a secret internal door takes you straight from restaurant to the club.
But first, chef Valentin Raffali’s seasonal menu. Under cinematic lighting and on plush velvet furniture, highlights are artichokes with clementine, bell peppers stuffed with sausage and a showstopping onion tarte tatin and vol-au-vent with morel mushrooms. In the corner, another DJ plays surrounded by floor-to-ceiling vinyl. This might be the poshest pre-gaming I’ve ever seen.
At about half-past midnight, everybody stood up at once, wordlessly deciding en masse that dinner was over. Almost all the tables digested their meal on the dance floor, even the fifty-something, intimidatingly cool Parisians dining next to me. Bus Palladium confirms that the French are dark horses.
The petite, artful rooms are an exquisite spot for a hangover. Clunk the radio dial onto a new station and do absolutely nothing other than order breakfast in-room the following morning.
As the trend for listening bars continues, Bus Palladium flirts with the idea of being the world’s first listening hotel. It offers the quintessential Parisian night out without the need to leave the building. If that isn’t living like an A-lister, then what is? Paris’ grande dames The Ritz and Hotel Plaza Athenee should remain on the bucket list, but Bus Palladium offers something far more interesting.
Rooms at Bus Palladium start from; £420 per night; go to buspalladium.com