It has a fabulous location: a quiet, quiet street but only a ten-second walk to the main St Germain axis of shopping, strolling and dining streets. And of course, close enough to the Eiffel Tower to walk there.
It has the potential to be a great hotel - 39 rooms of varying sizes, some with terrace balconies based around a small central courtyard. And perhaps at one time it was. But its faded, battered exterior and grotesque 60s décor (original, with the original wear and grime as well) mean it's a grandma's choice if anyone's.
We were rather cheeky about the Hôtel Bellechasse in our review of design hotels in Paris. But we take it back, as if you're looking for a special hotel on a buzzing street, seconds from the Orsay Museum, a pop across the river to the Louvre, and only a short, nice walk along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower, this is the place you'll find love.
The Bellechasse is a Christian Lacroix baby, a thing which you see immediately on entering the small foyer - unmistakeable bold, bizarre mixtures of colours (including a yellow ceiling) and deep, plush fabrics. The staff are super-helpful, if rather brusque in a very French way.
Quietly sleek, it's the kind of place unassuming honeymooners spend their first night of bliss.
Just off rue St-Germain on a tiny, one-way street, you'll bump into its restaurant first, which spills out onto the pavement terrace. The clientele are usually well-dressed thirty- and fourty-somethings, with sunglasses and Versacci jeans and tiny mobile phones.
They're both on streets running off from the Champ de Mars, on which the Eiffel Tower proudly stands among a sea of screaming children and knick-knack sellers.
And they're both, well, not the crème de la hotel scene in Paris, but a decent choice at what's usually a fairly decent rate (depending on special offers).
Sigmund Freud was right. The number of requests we get for hotels near the Eiffel Tower, that King of phallic symbols, you'd think there was nothing else to see in Paris.
Okay, so it's a dramatic site. In A View to a Kill, the bizarrely-named Bond baddie May Day parachutes off the top of the Eiffel Tower after a mad chase by Bond - in fact, if you look closely, you see she actually parachutes off a platform specially made for the film.
And it's been the site of a real-life struggle as well. When Hitler rolled into the city and tried to hoist the swastika on the top of the Eiffel Tower, the sneaky French cut the lift cables so he'd have to climb the stairs to the top. In fact, his first swastika blew away in the wind, causing great hilarity, and the red-faced Nazi soldiers had to hike up their to hoist a smaller one instead.
But drama aside, let's get a couple of things straight:
We mention the Hôtel Duc de Saint-Simon more as a warning than a recommendation. 
