Review of Hotel Bel Ami, by Matthew Barker

The Hotel Bel Ami is a handsome Left Bank hotel housed in what was once a wing of the Abbey St Germain, later an 18th-century printworks. A recent revamp by a new generation of French designers has seen the introduction of earthy tones, sleek lines and exposed remnants of its industrial past, with the occasional echo of its ecclesiastical beginnings.

No restaurant, but the Cantine, a converted jazz club in the basement, is a natty and mercifully informal place to take bleary-eyed breakfast. The bar, with its copper coloured mosaic tiles and bleached ash tables, an equally dapper pit stop.

Saint Germain des Prés: the Deux Margot and Café de Flore, legendary hang-outs of Satre and de Beauvoir; or Emporio Armani and Louis Vuitton, latter day hang-outs of Posh 'n' Becks. You choose. Could always do both of course, and find time too for the Church of Saint Germain des Prés, with its small Picasso sculpture in the courtyard dedicated to Apollinaire; the bookshops and galleries along rue St André des Arts and rue Jacob by the river, and lunch at Café de la Croix Rouge.