Visit the incredible Hôtel de la Païva on the Champs-Elysées

Located on the famous avenue des Champs-Elysées, the Hôtel de la Païva is the fabulous jewel box of the Marquise de la Païva. A place out of time, revealing the incredible Parisian epic of the most famous courtesan of the Second Empire.

Photo credit: Amandine Goetz

Although her name carries a title of nobility, the Marquise de la Païva has not always been in the upper echelons of Parisian life. On the contrary, Esther Pauline Blanche Lachmann grew up in the Moscow ghetto of the 1800s. 

Married to a French tailor living in Russia, with whom she had a son, she soon grew bored of her family life and left for Europe with a stranger, who brought her to Paris. It was there that she settled in the Lorettes district, a hotbed of Parisian prostitution, where she worked her charms under the pseudonym Thérèse. 

Photo credit: Amandine Goetz

In 1840, the wealthy pianist Henri Herz fell madly in love with her and introduced her to the leading composers and writers of the day (Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Théophile Gautier...), before secretly marrying her. It was only a few years later that she took advantage of one of her concert trips abroad to squander her fortune. She was then chased away by his family and left to live in London.

Photo credit: Amandine Goetz

She had a succession of rich lovers, until she met the Portuguese nobleman, the Marquis Albino Francisci Païva-Araujo. Like his previous lovers, he showered her with gifts, even buying her a hotel in the Place Saint-Georges. However, the future Marquise de la Païva's intention was to marry him in order to regain her famous title of nobility. She achieved her goal by having their marriage annulled the day after they married.

Photo credit: Amandine Goetz

In 1952, the Marquise de Païva became the mistress of Count Guido de Donnersmarck, a wealthy Prussian and cousin of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Infatuated with her, he had this fabulous Hôtel de la Païva built for her at 25 avenue des Champs-Elysées between 1855 and 1866.

The Marquise de la Païva commissioned the architect Pierre Manguin. Inspired by the Italian Renaissance style, he built one of the most expensive private mansions in Paris, at a cost of almost 10 million gold francs.

Photo credit: Amandine Goetz

The Hôtel de la Païva is now privately owned and was listed as a historic monument in 1980. It was bought by the Travellers Club in 1923, who still use it today as the headquarters of their ‘gentlemen's club’. However, the doors of this luxurious residence are open to the public on guided tours organised by Des Mots et Des Arts.

 

To book your visit to the Hôtel de la Païva with Des Mots et Des Arts, go to : desmotsetdesarts.com/visites-guidees

 

Front page image: Amandine Goetz
Editorial staff: Amandine Goetz