La Réserve Paris

Michel Reybier bought the building in 2009 and had everything behind the stone facades taken out, with Bach & Nguyen on the architecture and Jacques Garcia on the interiors. The main staircase was reassembled afterwards, and the molded ceilings and marble fireplaces restored. It went up in 1854 for the family of Charles de Morny, a half-brother of Napoleon III, stayed with them until 1888, and ended its working life as the Résidence Hôtel Maxim's under Pierre Cardin. It opened as a hotel in January 2015.

Garcia worked in Second Empire and Belle Epoque registers: silk hung walls, damascene brocade, herringbone oak parquet, antique furniture, bathrooms in Turquin blue and Carrara marble. The suites take the first floor to the fifth and run from 50 square metres to over 200, no two alike, the largest keeping their own Grand Cru cellars. The Eiffel Suite looks onto the avenue, with the tower rising clear beyond it. From the Duc de Morny suite the glass roof of the Grand Palais shows through the avenue trees, and a hidden door runs from bedroom to entrance for an exit nobody sees. Fifteen rooms and twenty-five suites in all.

The Duc de Morny library is kept for guests through the morning and opens to visitors after that, there is a smoking lounge, and the sixteen metre pool went into the basement so the formal rooms above were left alone. The house holds the Palace distinction, which France grants above the five star grade. The point was never scale.