Worst Airbnb we have ever stayed in, and unfortunately we had to stay there for 2 weeks as there are no last minute options in Paris for long term stays for families of 6 people.
In the spirit of trying to be balanced, I will start with a few positives. The location is fantastic with tons of shops and bakeries close by. Beware that it is the Marais and the sound insulation from the street is nonexistent you’ll get a ton of noise on Fridays and Saturdays until 4-5am and everyday from 7-8am as street cleaning trucks / garbage trucks and deliveries start working through the neighborhood.
There is functional air conditioning in the apartment which is rare in Paris.
The mattresses of the two beds were comfortable.
The negatives:
1) The place is tiny (my guess is 450 sqf / 40 sqm) and not suitable for 6 people unless all you plan on doing there is to sleep. I know it is the Marais where apartments are smaller, but this is not suitable for 6 people. There is not enough seating around the dining table for 6 - only 4 seats. Once the couch is open there is pretty much no more space in the living room and it is impossible to walk through the apartment. If you are more than 4 people don’t stay there. If there are 4 of you and you have large suitcases, forget it too. Certainly not suitable for long term stays.
2) The apartment was filthy with dust, food crumbs all over the floor, dirty appliances (Dirty microwave and fridge, dirty electric tea kettle et ). Hairs on the sheets and pillows. Grease, coffee and dried yoghurt on the dining table. Grease stains on the walls. Grease and unidentifiable stains all over the dining chairs. The host responded after 3 days of us complaining and brought it new chairs but didn’t take back the old disgusting ones and didn’t offer to re-clean right away . We didn’t want them to come back again so we did the cleaning ourselves. We left the apartment cleaner than it must have been for a long time. The place needs a full day of deep cleaning, despite its size, to be at a basic cleanliness level.
3) The apartment was totally run down, totally unsafe for young children: Broken garbage bin, broken coffee table, hole (punched?) in the bathroom door, rusty screws around the bathroom sink, upstairs bedroom door threshold broken with sharp rusty screws sticking out vertically! There was a water leak outside the apartment’s entrance, probably from the upstairs toilets, which means the staircase was slippery.
The shades in the downstairs bedroom were ragged and torn, letting all the light get in from early in the morning, which was unwelcome given how noisy tbe neighborhood is late into the night.
We managed about 4 hours of sleep on average in the apartment.
The fuse for the ceiling lights started malfunctioning 7 days into our stay and make a loud buzzing sound. The utility company advised us to shut it down which means we only had dimfloor lamps to have light after dark.
The hosts were responsive on the fuse issue and offered to send someone but at that point we were just powering through the stay and didn’t want anyone to come in the mini, cramped space with all of our belongings.
The AC downstairs stopped functioning 3 days before the end of our stay.
The owners clearly have not maintained the place well enough and need to do a serious reinvestment for this place to be safe and functional again. To make it comfortable would be a bigger stretch…
4) the 6th floor walk up a tiny tiny tiny staircase with large suitcases is a back breaker. Don’t consider if you have more than a weekend bag.
Airbnb negotiated a 20% refund for our stay, which we consider less than the minimum given how horrible of a stay it was. We didn’t enjoy the place for à mon, spent all the time we could outdoors. We tried to get out of it for 5 days, unsuccessfully as everything was sold out in Paris.
Even with a partial refund the place was much more expensive than 2 bedrooms in a Parisian hotel at this time of year, which would have been a better idea given that we barely used the kitchen and how dirty and run down everything was.
So in short, we don’t recommend. Consider only if you are a group of 4 or less, are staying less than 3 nights, have no large bags, and the hosts provide clear evidence that the place has been cleaned, maintained, and made safe again. Whatever the host says, don’t believe it, check out our reviews which are all positive. We take care of the places where we stay. We took care of this one as much as we could, but it was just fundamentally unacceptable from the start.