There is a building in the 16th arrondissement that has always refused to be Parisian in the strict sense of the word. Designed in the 1920s by architect Lucien Pollet in the style of an ocean liner—with walkways, horizontal volumes, and a relationship to water as a defining feature— the Hôtel Molitor has opened its rooftop for the 2026 season with a new twist: a menu and ambiance inspired by the Mediterranean, from the south of France to Greece, via the Italian coast and the Levant.
The nautical metaphor is nothing new. It’s set in stone. What this season’s redesign achieves is an update: whereas Pollet’s ocean liner sailed through a generic interwar-era imagination, the 2026 rooftop anchors its journey in a specific geography—both climatic and culinary. Sunny yellow and azure blue tones, wide sofas designed for shared dining, a view of the historic basin on the ground floor below.
The menu reflects a similar philosophy. Vitello tonnato with capers, roasted octopus with smoked paprika, sea bream with lemon caviar: dishes that don’t need to be French to work perfectly in this context. The beverage partnerships—Pommery champagnes, Minuty rosés, Gin Mare with Mediterranean botanicals on Fever-Tree—create a cohesive theme rather than a mere collection of brands. The signature cocktail, Rosé Riviera, combines Minuty rosé, peach, and rosemary: three unpretentious southern ingredients.
Sidebar — The Building Designed by Lucien Pollet, the Molitor opened in 1929 as a public swimming pool. Closed in 1989, squatted in, bought back, and renovated, it reopened in 2014 under the MGallery brand. The outdoor pool, a listed landmark, remains the architectural backbone of the venue. The rooftop—accessible starting in the 2026 season as a restaurant and bar, open seven days a week from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.—overlooks this pool, with about 100 square meters dedicated to lunch and dinner service (dishes starting at €27, cocktails starting at €18).
What Paris has been doing for the past decade with its rooftops—transforming them into standalone destinations, perceived as destinations in their own right rather than as extensions of hotels—the Molitor does with a structural advantage that few competitors possess: a coherence between the original site, its mythology, and its outward projection. The pool is not a decorative detail. It is the reason why the metaphor of the open sea holds true at the Molitor better than anywhere else.
The season opened on May 14.
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