Mandarin Oriental, Paris

In the 1870s, number 251 rue Saint-Honoré was the Salle Valentino, a hall whose posters advertised balls and concerts every evening. By 1881 the site held a panorama, a huge circular painting viewed from a central platform. This panorama, by Théophile Poilpot and S. Jacob, showed the charge of the French cuirassiers, armored cavalrymen, at Reichshoffen in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War.^[1][2][3]

The Impressionists were a group of painters who worked quickly, often outdoors, in broken brushstrokes meant to catch changing light. They painted landscapes and modern city life, and they showed their work together eight times between 1874 and 1886, independently of the official Salon exhibitions in Paris. The seventh Impressionist exhibition was held in rooms of the panorama building at 251 rue Saint-Honoré, from 1 to 31 March 1882. Camille Pissarro persuaded Claude Monet and Gustave Caillebotte to take part, according to the Art Institute of Chicago, and Pissarro's painting Young Peasant Having Her Coffee hung there as number 111.^[4][5][6][7]

In 1886 the Nouveau Cirque (New Circus) replaced the panorama in the same building, opening on 12 February. The circus ring's floor could be lowered and flooded. On the opening night, the carpet covering the ring was taken away, the floor sank and water filled the ring to make a pool, Le Matin reported the next day. The circus was still performing in February 1926. In May 1926 the L'Union insurance companies bought the circus, together with the building next door at number 247, and then demolished the circus building. The building that held the panorama, the 1882 exhibition and the circus no longer exists.^{[8][9][10][11][12][13]}

The L'Union companies planned a large building at number 251 to house their offices, a 1929 court ruling records. The architect Charles Letrosne designed the new building, and in June 1934 the City of Paris gave it a shared fourth prize in its façade competition of 1932. The property company Société Foncière Lyonnaise (SFL) bought this office building in 2006, and the architects Wilmotte & Associés turned it into a hotel. The architects kept Letrosne's two monumental 1930s portals on rue Saint-Honoré, demolished an inner building to make space for the central garden and added a seven-story wing. SM Design and Agence Jouin-Manku designed the interiors. The hotel opened in June 2011 with the chef Thierry Marx as culinary director. Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group bought the building from SFL in February 2013.^{[12][14][15][16][17][18]}

France's Palace distinction is an official label given, for three years at a time, to a small number of five-star hotels. Mandarin Oriental, Paris received it in 2014, and it was renewed in 2019. The hotel lost the distinction in 2026. It is not on the list of 33 Palace hotels that Atout France, the national tourism agency, published on 2 June 2026, and it remains a five-star hotel.^[19][20][21]