Stay someplace other than the George V? Mais oui.

The City of Light has a thousand fine hôtels and cozy pensionnés, but for the past 80 years there has really been only one reliably flawless choice for the expense-account American in Paris: George V.

Well, the old guy had a good run while it lasted. With the opening of the Hôtel Fouquet’s Barrière, the French capital has a new five-star that, if not exactly better than the venerable Cinq, is certainly every bit its equal. Located at the corner of Avenue George V and the Champs Élysées, just a block and a half from its famous rival, the Fouquet’s Barrière looks at first glance as if it, too, has been around since the Jazz Age. To pull this off, the family-owned Lucien Barrière Group spent $500 million and seven years acquiring and gutting an entire block of Haussmann-era buildings and fusing them to a landmark bistro for a seamless, state-of-the-art, palace-style accommodation with one very cool hotel dining room.

The Barrières made their nut in the French resort-casino business, and they bring a sense of the dramatic to their new showpiece. Inside, classic architectural elements merge with quirky proportions and clubby masculine touches. Doors are oversized; elevators and chaises are undersized; and throughout, details such as silver-inlaid leather walls and the below-ground marble-lined spa and pool make you feel as though you’re luxuriating in your own twenty-first-century Versailles.

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