Hotel: Hotel du Louvre

Address: Place Andre Malraux, Paris 75001

Web site: www.hoteldulouvre.com

TraveLife ranking:

Rooms: 200

Room rates: $450+

Highlights: You sleep with history and right next to it when you stay at the Hotel du Louvre. Many of the hotel’s floor-to-ceiling windows look out on the world famous museum and allow glimpses inside without ever having to leave your room. Tearing yourself away from the Hotel du Louvre to see the Louvre is no easy task. There is just as much history on this side of the street to discover.

History: The hotel originally opened in a much smaller building - which still exists - across the square next to the Palais Royal in 1855. It was ordered built by Napoleon III for the World Exhibition. Two years later it was moved to its present location. French impressionist Camille Pissaro painted his famous Paris Opera House masterpiece in 1898 in the room that now bears his name. A copy of his priceless work now hangs in the handsome suite.

Interior highlights: The entrance to the hotel, which is a work of art itself, looks directly down Avenue de L'Opera and the world famous Opera Garnier, one of the most beautiful buildings ever constructed.  The hotel, which looks much bigger from the exterior, offers classic elegance and some of the most beautiful views of Paris. From its upper floor rooms you can see the Louvre, Palais Royal, Opera Garnier and the Comedie Francaise, an ornate theatre where shows are still held today. The completely refurbished hotel is getting better with age. It offers guests some dramatic color schemes, starting with brightly painted green corridors and continuing into tastefully decorated rooms highlighted with charming wallpapers and marble bathrooms.

In the next room: Super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, according to his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, preferred the Hotel du Louvre over all other Paris properties. There's even a plaque in the hotel's lobby from the Sherlock Holmes Society verifying that fact. Many Hollywood and European movie stars have been seen snooping around the hotel these days.

The rooms:  No two rooms at the Hotel du Louvre are the same and the hotel's interior designers have come up with eight different color schemes, all inspired in the Napoleon III style. Rooms located on the lower floors of the five-story hotel offer guests high ceilings and plenty of room - some allowing you to look at the priceless works in the museum. The upper floors, where the servants of the high and mighty of past years were billeted, are smaller but no less charming. They are the ones preferred by women travelers and their sloping ceilings make them look more like attics than hotel rooms. Very cozy! The hotel recently commissioned a study to try and match the hotel's color schemes to different nationalities. The hotel management reports North Americans prefer their rooms painted blue, while the patriotic British are fans of red, white and blue rooms. Europeans prefer yellow. The rooms come crammed with the best of everything and now offer high speed Internet access.

Restaurants: The hotel’s famed Brasserie offers traditional upscale cuisine with generous portions, featuring seafood and products of the “terroir”, as well as creative light menus. All in all, food that is typically French, healthy, natural, flavorful and unique. In the summertime, enjoy the flower-filled terrace, ideally located on Place de Palais Royal between the Comedie Francaise and the Louvre Museum.  The hotel’s bar is just as famous and a gathering place for Paris’ chic set.

Shopping: All the best shops Paris has to offer are in easy walking distance and the hotel has some pretty impressive shops attached to it, one specializing in top-notch paintings.

Close by:  As the legendary hotelier Conrad Hilton once observed, the most important thing about a property is "location, location, location." The Hotel du Louvre could not be better located in Paris - just steps away from most of the city's best attractions, including the impressive Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe. It's also bordered by a network of those charming narrow Paris streets where you can buy anything from mouth-watering pastries to the latest French fashions.

TraveLife tips: With the Da Vinci Code craze attracting lots of people to Paris these days, the Hotel du Louvre captures all the excitement of the book. It’s also a great place to base yourself while hunting down the places used in the movie. This is a hotel that is well worth the price and if a bit more emphasis was placed on service, TraveLife would elevate it to a 5-star property.