Welcome to the Hotel Paradiso: Europe’s first hotel-cinema

Cinemas are still closed in France due to the pandemic, but film buffs with deep pockets can indulge their passion at the new Hotel Paradiso in Paris. Run by the MK2 cinema group, the 36 rooms are in fact private screening spaces, where screens are bigger than the beds.

Clients at the Hotel Paradiso watch films on huge screens from the comfort of their beds, and in the plushest rooms - the bath tub. © Hotel Paradiso

The Hotel Paradiso sits proudly on top of the MK2 Nation cinema in Paris’s 12^th arrondissement, overlooking JR’s latest Charlie Chaplin fresco.

It's entirely devoted to what the French call the “7^th art”. Each of its 36 rooms has been transformed into a movie lover’s haven with 3-metre wide screen and hi-tech video projectors.

Clients select movies from 8 streaming platforms including MyCanal, Netflix, MK2 Curiosity and Svod on a touch pad, or they can delve into the hotel's 2,500 DVD collection.

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Two "Cinema Suites" have their very own screening rooms with a sitting area and professional standard CDI 2K projectors.

The cinema experience goes beyond the bedroom though. There’s a roof terrace with an open-air cinema and clients have access to MK2 Nation’s six traditional theatres on the hotel ground floor.

And because this is meant to be a fun experience, there’s also the “La La Land” nightclub for partying and practising your karaoke skills.

Visite #HotelParadiso @mk2 à paris, qui proposera dès le 10 mars des chambres façon salle de ciné : écran et son géant avec accès à près de 10000 films... Vue sur les oeuvres réalisées par @JRart @LVT_RTL pic.twitter.com/XzmzEULD6f

— Stéphane Boudsocq (@Stephbou08) March 8, 2021

7 years in the pipeline

The hotel opened on 10 March and the timing couldn’t be better given that cinemas are closed and cinephiles are in desperate need of a fix.

But the project has been in the pipeline for seven years, long before France put cinema into lockdown.

It's the brain child of Elisha and Nathanaël Karmitz, the sons of film producer and founder of the huge MK2 cinema group, Marin Karmitz.

“The hotel is just the latest Paradiso concept we’ve been working on for the last 15 years,” Nathanael Karmitz told Le Monde daily.

The concept is a “hybrid format linking cinema and gastronomy, dance and games, offering a different way of experiencing the 7^th art”, he explained. "It's cinema as a lifestyle."

Poster of \\\"Cinema Paradiso\\\" exhibition at the Grand Palais DR

The brothers set up the Germain Paradiso space in Paris in 2010 and organised Cinema Paradiso festival at the Grand Palais in 2013 and 2015 and at Le Louvre in 2019.

“It’s cinema as folk art. We must never forget we started out on fairgrounds.

“It’s not just a screen in front of a bed,” Karmitz continued. “Cinema is written into each hotel room. There’s permanent interaction between the two worlds.”

But the interaction is limited for the time being, and the hotel won't really come into its own until Covid health restrictions are lifted. There’s no access to the 6 cinema screens at MK2 Nation and the rooftop cinema and “La La Land” club are not open. 

The Hotel Paradiso has a rooftop cinema, which will open once Covid health restrictions are lifted © Screengrab, Hotel Paradiso website

“Cinema undergoes a revolution every 20 years, whether it’s about content or the medium. The thing is: ‘how do we get things to evolve’?”

That is the question, and one that a lot of people in the cinema industry are currently battling with.