LA MAISON hotel & spa

The Location

Saarlouis is a planned town. Louis XIV had it laid out from 1680 to designs by Vauban, as a fortress on France’s eastern frontier, and its ring roads still follow the old fortifications. The hotel stands on one of these rings, close to the Saar, in park-like grounds.

Bastions and casemates begin practically at the door; the old town, with its cafés and small shops, is a few minutes’ walk away. The Saar cycle path runs right past the house. Metz is half an hour’s drive, Saarbrücken almost as close, and on every road sign the town’s name recalls its founder.

Backstory

The villa on the ring was built in 1913 as an officers’ mess. Later it housed public authorities, finally, until 2005, the Saarland Higher Administrative Court; after that it stood empty. For a while Günter Wagner, a trained hotelier and son of the pizza entrepreneur Ernst Wagner, walked round the building every day, sat in the park and thought. In 2011 he bought it.

The Saarlouis architects Christina Beaumont and Achim Gergen of CBAG converted it over two years, adding the new building alongside. They also designed the interiors of the guesthouse and the spa. In 2015 the Pastis bistro opened first; LOUIS followed two years later, once things were running. The guesthouse came in 2019, the spa in 2025, complete since January 2026. Wagner does not like to talk about himself. The house matters more, he says; he is at most a side note.

Interior & Architecture

A ceiling light of glass globes, Italian, around 1970, hung for forty years in the entrance hall of an Italian electricity company. Now it hangs in LA MAISON, where other objects have similar former lives: cushions made from old Hermès scarves, retired cinema lamps.

For the public rooms and the spa, Hamburg’s Conni Kotte, once a production designer in film, went hunting for one-offs and finds. ‘Quality is essential,’ she says. Price tags are not the point: much of it is not especially valuable, says the hotel director, more a collection of personal favourites. The quality lies in the material, such as the mouth-blown Murano glass of a 1958 floor lamp by an unknown designer.

Much of the art comes from Wagner and his wife; some was painted by the gardener. In the lobby a white staircase sweeps up in two flights. The interior designer Birgit Nicolay shaped the rooms in the new building, whose aluminium louvres can be adjusted from inside.

A Look Inside

In the evening every guest comes in through the villa’s main entrance and passes the bar and lobby. The five rooms in the old building are on the small side, each one different.

Conni Kotte designed Chocolat and Ratatouille after the films, and the Amélie room, too, alludes to its namesake film. In Chocolat there is a bath on lion’s-paw feet, there are books about chocolate on the shelf, and the television, naturally, shows the film. Opposite Amélie is the Louis room.

The new building has 33 rooms, with murals behind the beds depicting a Saarlouis street scene. The guesthouse has ten rooms and two suites, one of which has an outdoor whirlpool. Some regulars leave suitcases or suits at the hotel between visits. Under the roof is the Dachatelier, a room for meetings and yoga.

Culinary

A single kitchen cooks for two restaurants. Its pass sits in the yellow glass cube you walk past on the way into LOUIS. The restaurant, named after the Sun King, occupies the former courtroom, with high ceilings, Saarinen chairs in the salon and black-and-white portraits by Anatol Kotte, 2.20 metres tall.

Since early 2023 Sebastian Sandor, a German with Hungarian roots who has worked in Japan and Belgium, has cooked here. There is a little Japan in every dish, he says, as in the lightly smoked char with a beurre blanc of beeswax and vanilla. For the fifth time in a row LOUIS holds two Michelin stars. Sandor comes out to the tables himself now and then; the sommelier Johannes Ammon recommends the wine.

Breakfast is served from 6.30 am in Pastis, whose conservatory above the park is the more popular room. In the evening Pastis serves a menu du soir, such as tarte aux abricots with thyme honey. In summer LOUIS lays tables in the inner courtyard. The delicatessen is run by a Frenchwoman.

Wellness & Relaxation

The spa is some forty metres from the villa, and almost every guest walks over in a bathrobe, even in winter. The garden pool, four metres by fourteen, is heated to 28–29°C all year, among timber decks, shade trees and lavender.

For the spa interiors, CBAG chose travertine, oiled oak and natural lime plaster. Lime can absorb moisture from the air and release it again, which, beside a steam bath, is more than a question of style. The three saunas are upstairs; the relaxation room, with its fireplace, lies behind a fully glazed façade. Natascha Saar runs the spa.

Surrounding Area

Go first to the Vauban Island (Vauban-Insel). The people of Saarlouis once called this fortification in the Saar’s old channel the ‘Halwe Mond’, the half moon; it was built between 1680 and 1689. Beside it stands the lock bridge of 1682, where the sluice mechanism can still be seen on the piers. Together with the outwork of 1698, it allowed the Saar to be raised by more than six metres and the surrounding land to be flooded. From the old powder magazine a five-metre concrete figure of 1946 looks out over the town: Marshal Michel Ney, who was born in the old town. A figure from 1973 commemorates the soldier Lacroix, who in 1815 was the last to remain at his post.

In the vaults of Bastion VI there is a restaurant, with a viewing platform above. The Stadtgarten, a 35-hectare park in its present form since 1928, adjoins it; some five kilometres of riverside paths run around the old channel. In town, the Museum Haus Ludwig and the town history museum in the Old Town Hall are worth a visit. The old town lies around the Großer Markt, once the garrison’s parade ground. In the evening people sit in the casemates, the vaults of the old fortress, which now house pubs and restaurants.

Activities

For fortress walkers. A circuit of the bastions, casemates and Vauban Island, the lock bridge of 1682, the Ney monument, the view from the platform of Bastion VI.

For art and culture lovers. Museum Haus Ludwig, the town history museum in the Old Town Hall, Theater am Ring, concerts in the Stadtgarten, the Oktavie-Allee cultural centre, the Völklingen Ironworks World Heritage Site.

For spa guests. Day spa without an overnight stay, couples’ and pregnancy treatments, beauty treatments.

For cyclists and paddlers. The Saar cycle path right by the hotel, canoeing, sailing and stand-up paddleboarding on the Saar’s old channel, a ride downstream to the Saar Loop (Saarschleife) near Mettlach and the Cloef viewpoint.

For nature lovers. Five kilometres of riverside paths along the old channel, the old trees of the Stadtgarten, the Bliesgau Biosphere Reserve with its meadow orchards and orchids.

For border-crossers. Metz, with its cathedral, old town and Centre Pompidou-Metz, half an hour away; Luxembourg in an hour; Saarburg, and Trier with its Roman buildings, a good seventy kilometres.

For gourmets. An evening at LOUIS, lunch at Pastis, Pastis products from the delicatessen to take away, Saar and Moselle wines, four-hands dinners with guest chefs, cookery courses in the house.

For readers. The library next to the bar, with Goethe, Oscar Wilde, Stefan Zweig, Joachim Ringelnatz and Eduard Mörike.

For industrial historians. The Völklingen Ironworks, whose blast furnaces can be explored on foot; the hotel director recommends allowing half a day. Also the Saarland Mining Museum.

For design lovers. The hotel’s design booklet, which explains every lamp and every chair, a Willy Rizzo console in the LOUIS Salon, the table lamps with Murano glass bases and hand-dyed shades in the restaurant.

Details

• 50 rooms and suites: villa (5 rooms, including the themed rooms Chocolat, Ratatouille and Amélie), new building (33 rooms), guesthouse (10 rooms, 2 suites, one with an outdoor whirlpool)
• LOUIS restaurant, two Michelin stars, Wednesday to Saturday evenings
• Pastis bistro with conservatory and delicatessen; breakfast from 6.30 am
• LOUIS bar & library, Dachatelier for meetings
• Spa of around 2,000 m², outdoor pool heated all year (4 × 14 m), three saunas, treatment rooms, day spa
• Dogs allowed; underground car park and EV charging points
• Two Michelin Keys
• Saarlouis main station a few minutes by car, Saarbrücken Airport around 40 km