Paris > Accommodations > Left Bank hotels

Left Bank Hotels

Pick from a selection of hotels in the 5th, 6th, and eastern 7th arrondissements, with an emphasis on locations near the Seine.

ABOVE: Some rooms at the five-star Hotel Pont Royal have terraces with views of the Eiffel Tower.

The term "Left Bank" conjures up images of painters and philosophers, literary cafés, and lovers kissing to accordion music. The reality is a bit different these days: The arrondissements along the southern bank of the Seine are mostly upmarket, and lovers are outnumbered by commuters catching buses along avenues that are filled with cars.

Head inland, and the ambiance is even more remote from the Left Bank of vintage Hollywood movies, although many of the neighborhoods are certainly pleasant to live in.

Still, the Left Bank has its advantages as a place to stay: Many tourist sites and sights are on the Rive Gauche, Métro and RER lines will take you just about anywhere in the city and its suburbs, and most smaller streets close to the river still contain a whiff of the magic that made Paris a magnet for artists, writers, and bohemian tourists a century ago.

In this article, we'll supply you with listings of good- to excellent-quality hotels that meet two key criteria:

• They're reasonably near the Seine (and therefore within walking distance of the Right Bank).

• They're in the 5th, 6th, and eastern 7th arrondissements, which are more likely to be of interest to visitors than hotels farther inland. (For hotels in the western part of the 7th, see our listings of Hotels near the Eiffel Tower.)

Links in this article will take you to the hotels' pages at Booking.com, Europe's leading reservations service, which offers secure transactions, guaranteed lowest available rates, and quality scores by paying guests who have actually stayed in the hotels. (Booking.com is our hotel partner, and we use it to reserve hotels whenever we travel in Europe and Asia.)

Please note:

• Not all Paris hotels are air-conditioned, especially in the one-, two-, and three-star categories. If you're visiting in the summer and don't like heat, check whether a hotel has air conditioning before you book.

• The hotel listings on the following pages have guest-rating scores that are drawn in real time from Booking.com's database.

Next page: 5th arrondissement hotels

About the author:

Durant Imboden is a professional travel writer, book author, and editor who focuses on European cities and transportation.

After 4-1/2 years of covering European travel topics for About.com, Durant and Cheryl Imboden co-founded Europe for Visitors (including Paris for Visitors) in 2001. The site has earned "Best of the Web" honors from Forbes and The Washington Post.

For more information, see About our site, press clippings, and reader testimonials.

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