Why are all these family photos displayed in the 5th floor corridors of the Hôtel Design Sorbonne, and who are all these people that we can see laughing, posing for the camera, swimming, getting married…? If you read the text woven into the carpet in the corridor (and understand French), all will be revealed. Here are a few extracts…

Hotel Design Sorbonne Paris

“Those wandering the corridors of the Hôtel de la Sorbonne must be asking themselves whose these people are adorning the walls, smiling for the camera, what were these anonymous people’s lives like? Let me tell you a story… »
(One of my great aunts left me some cases that I remember seeing in her big house when I was a kid, cluttering up the place. After a certain amount of hesitation – as they had fascinated me for a while – I decided to look through the contents)
“I didn’t know whether I was going to find the key that would open the first case, as the key chain contained about a hundred different keys, but finally I managed, and the lock opened with surprising ease. I opened the case and found… photos, photos, a ridiculous number of photos in tiny, marked packages with a different name on each…”
“And so I started carefully looking at all the packages containing the names of people that I had met during my life: my family, my friends, my colleagues…”
“There were certain families that I didn’t recognise, others that were familiar. I blithely accepted this legacy without thinking about it too much, telling myself that in any case I would have to give each packet back to its owner… And as I was working on the renovation of the Hôtel de la Sorbonne, I decided that the corridors on the 5th and 6th floors would be the perfect place to show the beautiful family portraits that I had discovered in the cases belonging to my great aunt.”

Alain Bisotti

To see all the family photos for yourself, visit the 5th floor of the Hôtel Design Sorbonne in Paris (here).

And if you’d like to book a room at the hotel, you should do so on our site. That’s where all the best Internet rates are!