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Wes Anderson is not a French hotelier. If he was, we could imagine that he would be running the Molitor Hotel. Its deliciously quirky design aesthetics and legendary summer swimming pool, makes it a ripe location for storytelling in a way that only the American film director can.
Located in west Paris, next to the Roland Garros tennis complex, the Piscine Molitor was a popular summer swimming pool for upmarket Parisians when it first opened in 1929. However its recent evolution into an Art Deco-inspired luxury hotel has given it a new lease of life, complete with a Clarins spa and sports club.
The result is a fashionably retro spa-meets-art-gallery property, with installations from artist, geometric tile patterns and stained glass windows scattered around the hotel. However while the quirks of the design add a touch of sophisticated nostalgia, there is very little that is dated within the walls with a state-of-the-art fitness area, and 124 spacious and fully teched-out rooms. But of course, ask any film director or hotelier worth their salt and they will tell you the importance of a leading character to carry the narrative of any story – and at the Molitor Hotel, the lead is very much the hotel’s summer pool.
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After a five decade stint of gradual decline, the indoor and outdoor swimming complex closed in 1989, only to be restored at the heart of this aggressively trendy new property having been faithfully restored to their former 1930s glory. The uniform yellow and blue design of the summer pool provides a striking centrepiece to the hotel with each of the rooms overlooking it to create a central holding shot that Wes Anderson would approve of.
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