Hôtel National des Arts et Métiers

Rue Saint-Martin follows the Gallo-Roman road that was the main north–south street of Lutetia, the Roman town that became Paris. The street is named after the priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, whose buildings, about 200 meters up the street from the hotel, now house the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, an institution for engineering and technical education, and its museum, the Musée des Arts et Métiers. The hotel's name refers to the Conservatoire. Rue Réaumur, the hotel's other street, is named after the physicist René-Antoine de Réaumur (1683–1757) because of the nearby Conservatoire.^[1][2][6]

Rue Réaumur was widened and rue de Turbigo was cut through near the hotel's corner in the 1860s. Two photographs by Charles Marville, taken between 1865 and 1868 and now in the Musée Carnavalet, show the works. One looks along rue Réaumur toward rue Saint-Martin as houses are demolished. The other shows the carré Saint-Martin, a small square near the priory's old refectory that the widening removed. The hotel describes its buildings as Haussmannian, the 19th-century Paris apartment-building style named after Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann. No construction date or architect is published for them, and they have no heritage protection under the Paris local urban plan.^{[3][4][11][6][5]}

The property company Réaumur Saint Martin has registered an establishment named Hôtel National des Arts et Métiers at 243 rue Saint-Martin since 1 November 2016. The company was created in September 1994 and took its present name in 2014.^[7][8]

Samy Marciano, a former head of the fashion brand Rodier, developed the hotel. From 2008 he had invested in six London hotels in seven years and opened the Hôtel Bachaumont in the 2nd arrondissement in 2015. For the new hotel he worked with the designer Raphael Navot and the architect-engineer Daniel Vaniche of the firm DVVD. DVVD reshaped the interiors of the two buildings, built the retractable glass roof over the courtyard patio and installed a cooling system that draws water from more than 60 meters underground. The hotel was inaugurated on 6 July 2017. Its bar, announced as Bar National in March 2017, had been renamed Herbarium by July. The hotel is run by the company SAS Hôtel National and belongs to La Clé Group, Samy Marciano's hotel group.^{[10][6][11][12][13][14][9]}