Cuban-American artist Jorge Pardo painted straight onto walls, doors and furniture to fill Arles’ L’Arlatan hotel with riotous pattern and colour.
As well as his own paintings, Pardo laid an impressive 6,000 sq m of mosaic tiles, using nearly two million handmade fragments to create the geometric patterns that run throughout the Arles hotel, whose rooms start from £149 per night.
The artist also designed intricate chandeliers and laser-cut metalwork, based on Mexican banderines. Every single piece of furniture in the hotel is a signed work of art.
It took a team of 30 painters, architects designers and cabinet-makers to restore the building, which dates back to the 5th century. The site has an even longer history, with the hotel located above the ruins of a Roman basilica – discovered in the late 1980s when its owners found the bases of statues and the remnants of a fountain in the basement.
20, rue du Sauvage, 13200 Arles, France
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