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At last, the first photos of La Belle Juliette !

Well, we’ve been talking about it for a long time, and now – finally! – we’re proud (really proud!) to be able to show you the first photos of the rooms from our new hotel, due to open in October 2010…

photos : Jérôme d'Almeida

Renovation of La Belle Juliette (previously Le Ferrandi) started nearly a year ago in July 2009. It’s a huge project, given that the whole hotel had to be rethought in order to create a spa, salons, a bar and larger rooms throughout. Our designer Anne Gelbard had dreamt up the new design, but could those dreams be brought to life?

It’s the question that all architects and decorators ask themselves, as taking drawings and making them into models before starting the actual building work can often bring with it a selection of surprises.

This is why four pilot rooms have been created, visited, exmained and analysed by the whole team, and we’re happy to announce that the results are SPLENDID!

There will be seven different styles of room altogether. Anne Gelbard gives us the details of how she conceived the different ambiences:

– 1st floor Madame Récamier and Madame de Stael: the greatest of friends, feminine, contemporary, one is straightforward, the other forceful

– 2nd floor The voyages to Italy: intensely stimulating encounter on both an artistic and friendly level. One of the most astonishing of Juliette’s exiles

– 3rd floor René de Chateaubriand: ‘the’ person in Juliette’s life and a controversial politician. On one hand the representation of her youthfulness, her passion for life, her flamboyant ideas, on the other the wisdom and before that the thought and writing that went into her memoires. This floor is composed like the volumes of his memoirs.

– 4th floor The parlours: as in ‘parler’, to talk and gossip, or how to represent the social whirlwind of the time, made up of literary salons, balls, celebrities (in their own way) and the freeing of morals…

The four pilot rooms show styles from the second and fourth floors.

Jérôme d’Almeida, our photographer since 2005, has taken a series of photos of these rooms, and we are proud to present them here exclusively!

We asked Jérôme to immerse himself in the world of Juliette Récamier. All the accessories seen in the photos are linked to Juliette. The strain of rose, “Curieuses”, supplied by florist Stanislas Draber, dates from her era. The books are biographies of Juliette, written by Chateaubriand. The portraits of Juliette are all period pieces.

But let’s allow the photos to speak for themselves…

The first photos are below, but if you want to see them larger, click on any one to be taken to the Flickr gallers, then click the four little arrows at the bottom right of your screen to go into fullscreen.

We would very much like to hear your comments, especially from those of you who stayed in the Ferrandi before. Feel free to express yourselves!