After years of darkness, the neon sign lights up once more: the Bus Palladium is now a five-star hotel with a nightclub for thosewho wish to relive the eclectic atmosphere of its past.
Sometimes, to truly grasp the soul of a hotel or a venue, one must travel back in time and rediscover its origins. We are in Paris, on Rue Fontaine, the street of Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and the protagonists of Surrealism. Here, on 30 September 1965—the yearof Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones and Help! by the Beatles—the twenty-two-year-old James Arch switched on a red neon signon the façade of a white building. He had transformed an olddance hall into a free-spirited place where different worlds couldmeet and dance together. He called it Bus Palladium, inspired by the famous New York club frequented by artists and nonconformist souls. An anti-club destined to become a legend of Parisian nightlife. After 57 years in operation, it closed its doors in July 2022.
Today, in 2026, it is reborn as a five-star hotel with 35 rooms and suites immersed in music around the clock. It houses a bar, a restaurant, a rooftop terrace, and, in the basement, the historicstage with a 200-seat balcony. Behind the project are Nicolas Saltiel and Christian Casmèze, together with Studio KO, Caroline de Maigret, Valentin Raffali, and Lionel Bensemoun. The aim wasto create something different from a conventional luxury hotel: a place reminiscent of New York’s Chelsea Hotel, a creative laboratory where artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, and travellers could live side by side and inspire one another. “Wewanted to create contrasts and give life to a place faithful to itsown DNA, with a certain dose of impertinence,” explain architectsKarl Fournier and Olivier Marty. The façade, minimalist and sandblasted, is adorned with subtle geometric patterns that echothe original building. The intervention was radical: 14 metres wereexcavated underground to create twelve levels in total, four of them below ground.
The interiors evoke the cinema of the 1960s and 1970s: rawconcrete ceilings, cork walls, blush-pink carpeting, Klein blue or dusty pink bathrooms, corduroy velvet curtains, and detailsrecalling vintage amplifiers and microphones. Each room isdifferent from the next and features contemporary artworks, collectible objects, vintage audio cassettes, and miniature bus models. The emblem of the spirit of the place is the Dalí Suite: a festive, creative space designed for private events.
