The Plaza Athénée’s effortlessly chic, light-filled La Galerie
In the first part of our luxury travel views column from the Autumn/Winter 2022 issue, LUX?s Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai checks in at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris
Many hoteliers I respect have told me that the highest priority, when creating a landmark new city hotel, is not the architecture or the name of the chef running the kitchen, but engaging and attracting the local community. A great city hotel should feel like a private club. This is partly so that the public spaces are filled when business travellers and tourists are thinner on the ground, but also because any discerning traveller wants to feel they are going where the insiders go. 
Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine This philosophy drove the success of Ian Schrager?s first boutique hotels in the 1980s, and continues thanks to the panache of today?s hoteliers. It has also driven the world?s great hotels since their inception: what were the original Ritz and Savoy, if not gathering places for the great and good" Urban tribes may have diversified and expanded now, giving a greater spread of aspiration, but the principles remain. Conversely, it is dispiriting to arrive at a new hotel in a new city to find that everyone else there seems to be as foreign and clueless as you are. 
One of the hotel’s peerless Eiffel Tower views
All of this brings me to the Plaza Athénée in Paris. You are welcomed into the marble-lin...