Opened in 1913, the Plaza Athénée stands at 25 avenue Montaigne, in the middle of the fashion houses. Its awnings and red geraniums on the façades have become a Paris signature.
Avenue Montaigne
The inner courtyard, covered in ivy and wisteria, becomes the dining room as soon as the weather turns. The bar, with its blue-tinted glass counter, was designed by Patrick Jouin. Dior opened a beauty institute inside the hotel, a few metres from its own house.
Arriving by car
Avenue Montaigne is wide, with a service lane that makes drop-off at the entrance easy. During Fashion Week traffic is filtered and the spaces outside the hotel are taken: the arrival time is set the day before with the concierge desk.
Photo: carspotter / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 2.0
Around the hotel
Avenue Montaigne lines up Dior, Chanel and Louis Vuitton over three hundred metres, with the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées almost opposite the hotel. The Champs-Élysées close the avenue at the top, the pont de l’Alma at the bottom: two useful ways out when one of them is saturated.
Our journeys from the Plaza Athénée
During Fashion Week the avenue fills with stationary cars and drop-off becomes difficult, so we move the pick-up one street away. The rest of the year, journeys head for the airports and stations, or move between showrooms and meetings, with the driver keeping the shopping in the boot.
