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Key figures

Origin and history

The Mezzara Hotel is an Art Nouveau style Parisian mansion built between 1910 and 1911 by the architect Hector Guimard for Paul Mezzara, a Venetian industrialist specializing in textiles and lace. The latter, vice-president of the Société des artistes décorateurs such as Guimard, entrusted him with this project in preparation for the 1925 Exhibition of Decorative Arts, originally planned before the First World War. The building, located at 60 rue Jean de La Fontaine (16th arrondissement), served both as a residence, as a showcase for Mezzara's fabrics and as a collaboration with contemporary artists such as Léon Jallot and Edgar Brandt. Mezzara lived there only two years before selling it in 1930.

Acquired by the Lacascade sisters in 1930, the hotel was transformed into a private school, then transferred to National Education in 1956 to become an annex to the Jean-Zay High School, welcoming high school students in boarding school. Ranked a historic monument in 1994 (registered) and in 2016 (classified), it was restored in 2005 and opened to the public on an ad hoc basis, notably at exhibitions organized by Cercle Guimard, an association dedicated to the preservation of the architect's heritage. Between 2005 and 2015, he also appeared as a film set, notably in Stephen Frears' Chéri (2009).

Disused in 2015, the state repeatedly tries to value it via emphyteotic leases (2021, 2023), under conditions of openness to the public. After years of mobilizing Circle Guimard to make it an Art Nouveau museum, a project led by Fabien Choné and the association was finally selected in 2025. The future Guimard Museum, scheduled for 2027-2028, will house private collections and loans from French and American museums, although critics emerged in 2026 on its possible disneylandization by the association Sites & Monuments.

Architecturally, the Mezzara Hotel illustrates the evolution of the Guimard style around 1910: fluid structures, organicist and stained glass mouldings announcing Art Deco. Its interior, organized around a central hall illuminated by a zenithal roof, preserves original elements such as the furniture of the dining room (buffet, table, chairs) designed by Guimard, or a dothillist canvas by Charlotte Chauchet-Guilleré, Le Rest. The building thus embodies an unfinished Art Nouveau manifesto, combining technical innovation and artistic collaboration.

The hotel's posterity is marked by its status as a symbol of tensions between heritage preservation and economic stakes. Its history reflects the changes of Paris in the 20th century: the transition from a bourgeois home to public equipment and then to a controversial cultural project. The debates surrounding its reconversion underline the delicate balance between accessibility, marketing and respect for historical integrity, particularly for a building so representative of a pivotal period in art history.

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