Lavie Maison - Marais, 5 bedrooms

Push open the door and it's the courtyard you notice first — that pocket of quiet that Marais buildings guard so well, tucked behind a façade on a street that hasn't changed much in three hundred years.

Ninety-three square metres, all on one level, five bedrooms threaded around a living room and open kitchen. Two jacuzzis, which is the sort of detail you don't see twice in Paris. Air conditioning, a smart lock, and self check-in whenever your train pulls in.

Rambuteau is the closest métro, but you'll probably walk everywhere: to the Marché des Enfants Rouges for Moroccan lunch, to the Place des Vosges after dark, to whatever café on rue de Bretagne catches you.

Built for the group trip — a family reunion, cousins converging, friends marking a birthday. What everyone remembers is coming back from dinner and finding the cour still there, still quiet, waiting.

Step out onto rue des Francs-Bourgeois and the pavement is already busy by 9h — gallerists rolling up shutters, a Vélib' being wrestled from its dock, someone carrying a flat white from Boot Café down the block. The Hôtel de Soubise sits at the end of the street, all pale stone and quiet courtyards, and the mansard rooflines tilt toward Place des Vosges two minutes east.

Le marché des Enfants Rouges, five minutes north on rue de Bretagne, is where l'équipe sends most guests on Sunday morning. It's the oldest covered market in Paris, tight as a corridor, and the move is a Moroccan tagine from Le Traiteur Marocain eaten standing up at the counter — then a pastry from the Italian stall for the walk home.