Hôtel Marignan Champs-Élysées

Rue de Marignan was opened in 1858. It is named after the Battle of Marignano, which King Francis I of France won against the Swiss in 1515, and it runs into rue François-Ier.^[1]

Around 1900 the house was the home of the vicomte and vicomtesse Frédéric de Janzé, according to Paris directories. A New York Herald column of 1928 recalled the vicomtesse opening her home at 12 rue de Marignan to raise money for Spanish soldiers wounded in the war in Cuba.^[2][3]

By 1922 the building housed the legation of Poland, the country's diplomatic mission in Paris. In January 1924 its head, Count Maurice Zamoyski, presented Marshal Ferdinand Foch with a painting by the Polish artist Wojciech Kossak there. The Polish ambassador still gave 12 rue de Marignan as his address in June 1926.^[4][5][6][7]

By September 1926 the building had become a luxury hotel, the Élysées Palace Hôtel, run by the Société des Hôtels Élysée-Marignan. It advertised tea dances every afternoon in the New York Herald and was still trading under that name in 1932. In 1929 the envoy of the Irish Free State, Count O'Kelly de Gallagh, gave the hotel as his address. It was a different hotel from the Élysée Palace Hôtel that once stood at 103 avenue des Champs-Élysées.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

Planning papers of 2010 describe the building as a hotel of six storeys over a basement. After works approved in 2011, the decorator Pierre Yovanovitch and the architect Vincent Bastie redesigned it in 2012. The 'Marignan Dynasty' of countesses and baronesses described on the hotel's website is a branding story, not history.^[13][14][15]

The American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt lived next door, at 10 rue de Marignan. A plaque on that building says she lived there from 1887 until her death in 1926, and Paris directories list her at the address from 1894.^[16][17]