As you head down this stark metallic hallway, perhaps you're wondering if a series of doors are going to slam closed behind you á la Maxwell Smart. You're going to encounter plenty of mysteries in this edifice, but this corridor coated in a delicate aluminum appliqué merely serves as a stylish passage to a hotel's lifts and a garden.

The property you've just checked into opened more than two decades ago and was updated earlier this year by a widely admired and famously enigmatic fashion designer. An architect responsible for a number of sumptuous bourgeois residences built the main house in the mid nineteenth century for a duchess who served as a mistress to an empress. By now you've noticed that the place employs a bit of marketing trickery: You're not on the illustrious avenue you might have expected given the name. Soon you'll be living large in a so-called golden triangle within a district packed with fashion houses and boutiques, embassies and a grand palace. And you'll be thrilled to discover that a tale whose kyphotic theme entranced you as a youngster was written on this very street (which honors a little-known Renaissance sculptor).

The hotel redo is pure theater, and arbiters of taste have raved about the sweeping staircases, the coal-dark reception walls, the waxed concrete floor in the restaurant, and the rooms swathed in lots and lots of white. One reviewer even gushed about a parallelepiped (good luck wrapping your tongue around that one). The suite complete with black-stained oak parquet floors, a cabinet of curiosities, and giant mushroom carvings is sure to provide great nightmare material. With diamond-shaped chandeliers, mirrors, and trompe l'oeil at every turn, you may well get dizzy in this surreal atmosphere, like the lady who at the opening festivities confused a real set of stairs for faux ones and took a tumble (talk about a face plainte…). Agent 86 would be right at home in this house of chaos.

Where are you, anyhow?

photo by Thierry Bouët

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