On Avenue Montaigne, a sharp turn off the Champs-Élysées, Hôtel Plaza Athénée wears the colour red like rouge. With its blushing awnings, the Haussmannian grande dame steals second glances away from its coterie of haute couture neighbours, among them the flagship houses of Celine, Prada and Louis Vuitton.

There’s a love story behind the hue. In the 1940s, actors and star-crossed lovers Marlene Dietrich and Jean Gabin were habitués of the hotel’s marbled halls, rubbing shoulders in the ground floor brasserie so often that table 1 beside the bar was considered theirs. Decades later, when Dietrich took up residence across the street, Gabin had the concierge festoon the balcony of a room they once shared with hundreds of roses. The romantic gesture planted the seeds for the hotel’s signature red-covered balconies, which brim with 1,900 scarlet geraniums every year. (The perennial lasts longer than roses.)

Even now, as influencers pucker for selfies in front of the stone-cut facade, it’s hard to overstate the grandeur of a place awarded the official distinction of a palace in 2011, two years shy of its centennial anniversary. Through its revolving door, the lobby is befittingly regal, encircled by columns preening with corsage-like bouquets, while underfoot, mosaic floors echo with kitten heels and glints of the crystal chandelier. Yes, that’s custom Dior you smell between the florals: a signature amber fragrance made exclusively for the plaza.

No monarch has ever called the palatial 54-suite and 154-guestroom property home, save for silver screen queen Elizabeth Taylor, who once checked into the Royal Suite for an extravagant six months. Instead, the hotel traces a lineage of fashion royalty back to Christian Dior, who in 1946, deliberately opened his first atelier in view of the plaza’s well-heeled clientele. The following year, he unveiled the elegantly cinched black and ivory Bar Suit, named for and made to wear in the hotel bar.

Like a couture line, no two rooms are alike, each one appointed by Marie-José Pommereau in the style of a classic Parisian apartment, with antique furnishings arranged to accentuate high ceilings. On the seventh floor, redesigned by Bruno Moinard and Claire Bétaille in 2021, and on the eighth floor, guestrooms are given the art deco treatment with a neutral palette, steel finishes and hints of red. The most requested rooms? The Eiffel Suites, with direct views of la Dame de Fer, along with the occasional ask for Suite 609, the pink Prestige Suite featured in the penultimate episode of Sex and the City.

Luxurious as the rooms are, it’s the practical gestures that impress, like adapters plugged into nightstand outlets or the choice between wheat and osteopathic pillows (among others). In the Dior Spa, fresh from its fall makeover, remaining traces of jet lag are diffused in the Light Suite, where energizing, relaxing or restorative sleep treatments take place under an LED-studded sky that mimics the light of the sun. For an extra glow, the spa-exclusive Soin Dior Privé Sur Demande face or body treatment combines electrostimulation and cryotherapy in the form of personalized pick-me-ups.

Living like and alongside royalty parts you with more than a few pretty pennies. If you have only one night, book a table at Le Relais Plaza, where fine and culinary arts converge. Choose wisely: In the brasserie’s halcyon days, Dior would hem his way into the fray from table 2. At a later time, one could find John Travolta playing it cool at 34, within earshot of Grace Kelly and Jackie Kennedy at 28 and 19, respectively.

Restaurant Jean Imbert au Plaza Athénée may attract more stars these days, including one of the Michelin ilk, awarded only nine weeks after opening in 2022. But there’s something about a good old, gilded brasserie that can’t be beat. And when it comes to gold, Le Relais Plaza basks in its sheen, whether cast by chef Imbert’s golden touch (which extends to the menu here, too), Francine Saqui’s 20,000 gold-leaf fresco of a bare-chested Diana and her hounds mid-hunt, or the unsuspecting crowd.