The Travelling Cape 
The Itineraries of the Travelling Cape

A visual diary of rare places, where the CASTELLAINES woman lives slowly and beautifully

Where to stay 
A Secret Within the Garden: Hôtel Particulier Montmartre

Hidden behind ivy-covered gates at the edge of Paris' most bohemian hill lies something few would expect: a maison once belonging to the Hermès family, now quietly transformed into one of the city's most poetic private hotels.

It isn't just the silence that feels rare here — it's the sense of inheritance. A patrimoine preserved in stone and soul, wrapped in an exquisite garden that muffles the rest of the world. Five suites only. Each different, each deliberate — curated like a private salon rather than decorated. The feeling is more encounter than lodging.

Inside: velvet, echoes of literature, objets d’art, and the faintest scent of cut roses in water. A place where time stretches. One might sip a dark espresso in the garden under the camellias and forget Paris is just beyond the gate. Or stay inside, writing by the window, wrapped in one’s own thoughts as if inside a novel.

This is not hospitality. This is possession, passed on — discreetly — to those who know how to receive it.

“Luxury isn’t always movement.                                                                            Sometimes it’s being hidden in plain sight.”

- And so we stayed. Or rather, the cape did — folded carefully over a velvet chair in the Red Suite, watching the light change on the parquet floor. There was no need to leave.

Breakfast was brought in on a silver tray, and the only itinerary was stillness. It reminded me that luxury isn’t always movement. Sometimes it’s being hidden in plain sight, surrounded by stories no one’s rushing to tell.

Hôtel Particulier Montmartre doesn’t perform — it lingers, it receives, and then it keeps a part of you.

Maison Villeroy: A Whisper of Nobility in the 8th

Tucked discreetly into Rue Jean Goujon, where Paris elegance no longer needs to announce itself, stands a hôtel particulier that doesn’t reach for grandeur — it is grandeur, remembered. Maison Villeroy is not a hotel in the ordinary sense, but rather a private residence that has been exquisitely awakened.

Originally a neoclassical mansion of a noble French industrial family, it now receives only a handful of guests at a time — as if guarding the integrity of its original purpose. Marble mantels, inlaid parquet, hushed hallways lit like jewelry boxes. The tone here is ceremonial but never cold. Service is invisible, yet everywhere. One does not stay here so much as one inhabits.

It is a place for those who already belong — not because of wealth, but because of understanding.

 “After walking the city’s limestone spine from morning to dusk, one returns… to be gently returned to oneself.”

- And so the cape was laid across the arm of a bergère in the Villeroy Suite, where the light fell softly onto silk curtains and Baccarat glass. Days passed in silence — not the absence of sound, but the presence of serenity.

In the evening, a quiet table at Trente-Trois, where the Michelin-starred chef sends out a sequence of dishes like whispers: delicate, deliberate, divine. After walking the city’s limestone spine from morning to dusk, one returns, unlaces, and descends into the spa — to be unknotted, calmed, and gently returned to oneself. Here, even time behaves — unhurried, well-mannered, impeccably dressed.

J.K. Place – Rue de Lille - A Townhouse for the Initiated

Rue de Lille, 7ᵉ arrondissement

Tucked behind the quiet, gallery-lined hush of Rue de Lille, a Parisian door barely signals its presence. There is no fanfare. No red carpet. Only a linen awning and a gesture—a knowing pause for those who know where they’re going.

Once an embassy, now a hôtel particulier reborn, J.K. Place Paris isn’t hospitality. It is discretion, designed. Its rooms, just a few, are not numbered in the usual way—they are named, held, felt. The house retains its original bones, now softened by Michele Bönan’s sculptural warmth: Italian modernism wrapped in Parisian stillness. Low lighting, paneled walls, velvets that breathe. Books not arranged, but read. Objects not placed, but kept.

This is the French capital as only insiders experience it—not as a performance, but as inheritance.

Downstairs, Casa Tua offers the kind of intimacy only found in remembered places. Candlelit, wood-panelled, utterly human. A Milanese whisper with a Florentine pulse—simple dishes served with reverence, not ceremony. Burrata that arrives like a secret. A martini with gravitas.

Upstairs, time alters its pace. The spa, scented lightly with Florentine oils, invites nothing more than a return to oneself. There are no marble stages here—just quiet rituals of restoration, carried out in near silence. The steam, the massage, the low hum of refinement. One comes undone with dignity.

"There are houses that receive you.
 And houses that reflect you."

– The cape, that morning, lay over a sculpted banquette near the fire. It had no need to be hung. It, too, belonged. From the suite to the book-filled lounge, it moved as I did—effortlessly, as if it had always been part of the place. The air was warm with cedar and something more elusive—perhaps serenity, perhaps style.

J.K. Place does not insist. It offers. And those who come don’t visit—they remember.