The Hôtel Louvre-Lens is a stylish four star hotel situated directly opposite the Louvre-Lens art museum in Lens and almost precisely one hour from the ferry terminals and Le Shuttle at Calais. It forms part of the upmarket Esprit de France hotel collection.
I have long wanted to visit Lens and its art museum in particular. I am glad that I finally did and the Hôtel Louvre-Lens was the perfect place to stay.
Lens was a significant coal mining town from 1720 until the closure of its last mine in 1990. It was at the heart of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais mining basin which stretches west for 75km across northern France from the Belgian border. Remarkably, this region produced half of the French coal supply from 1940 to 1960 which was vital to France’s recovery following the ravages of World War II.
Steep economic decline followed the closure of the mines. Thankfully Lens has reinvented itself as a cultural centre, spearheaded by the opening of the Louvre-Lens art museum in 2012, the first outpost of the Louvre in Paris.
The Hôtel Louvre-Lens opened in 2016 and is of some architectural interest. At the front, it overlooks a low earthen wall which encircles the Louvre-Lens art museum and its 50 acre park.
The hotel is housed in a row of, and indeed surrounded by serried ranks of, what used to be miners’ cottages. The hotel embraces this heritage and is of low elevation and houses 52 rooms across two long corridors.
The hotel cleverly combines glass and light with traditional local materials, such as basalt, black stone and flooring made from old railway sleepers, to create a warm and welcoming atmosphere.
The hotel is spotlessly clean and has various amenities, such as a fitness room and a small sauna. Complimentary tea and coffee, and copies of Le Monde and The Financial Times, are available in the reception area. The friendly staff speak excellent English.
The rooms are comfortable and well proportioned, with clean lines, excellent beds and sumptuous pillows. The bathrooms are modern and feature high quality hand and body products from Codage Paris.
The hotel’s Restaurant Galibot should not be missed. The cuisine is excellent and is an absolute bargain. For dinner, the gazpacho, made with fresh vegetables, a traditional “pistou” basil and olive oil sauce from Provence, with a dusting of eggplant caviar, was refreshing.
The local fish of the day, from a fishmonger in Boulogne, was delicious and filling. The “Pyramide du Galibot”, a large dark chocolate mousse with almond biscuit, was a marvellous end to the evening.
Breakfast in the Restaurant Galibot provided fortification for the day ahead, with a decent range of coffee and tea, bread and pastries, cooked breakfast, fruit and smoked salmon.
Given its proximity to the hotel, there is no excuse for missing the Louvre-Lens Museum. The main exhibition space, the Galerie du Temps, is a huge open gallery which displays over 200 artworks which form part of the vast collection of the Louvre in Paris. That artwork extends from the fourth millennium BC to the middle of the nineteenth century and provides a carefully curated snapshot of the history of art. An hour or so should be sufficient for a tour.
The Louvre-Lens Museum is itself an interesting building which has a long, almost luminous, aluminium façade and is on a single level in order to reflect the low lying nature of the mine buildings which serviced the mine shafts, now long closed, which lie beneath the site of the museum.
Unfortunately, time did not permit a visit to nearby war memorials or the “terills”, the conical, steely grey slag heaps which pepper the landscape near the museum and which are the highest in Europe. I will be sure to visit when I return to Lens.
I heartily recommend a restorative stop at the Hôtel Louvre-Lens to any traveller who is wearily flogging home to Britain, or cheerfully heading in the opposite direction, perhaps to the Alps or the Cote d’Azur.
The Hôtel Louvre-Lens is open throughout the year and welcomes families and pets. Bookings may be made at www.hotel-louvre-lens.com and www.espritdefrance.com. The hotel can be contacted directly by email at [email protected] or by telephone on +33 3 66 98 10 40.
Those websites have English and French sections and contain useful information about Lens, the Louvre-Lens Museum and the surrounding area.
The price of a standard room for two adults without breakfast is about €100 per night and with breakfast is about €130. The half board price of that room for two adults with breakfast and a three course dinner in the hotel restaurant is about €200 (excluding drinks). Naturally, these prices fluctuate depending on availability and the season.
Details of other hotels within the Esprit de France hotel collection can be found at www.espritdefrance.com.
Entrance to the Louvre-Lens Museum and its park is free. The website address is www.louvrelens.fr.
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