The People - Paris Marais

The People Marais opened in 2018 on a former office building and is the flagship of the four-hostel Paris chain. It's the biggest and the most-booked — around 400 beds in a ten-story building with ground-floor café, rooftop terrace and three lounge floors. You're on Boulevard Morland, a stretch that's technically 4th arrondissement but quieter than the Rue Vieille du Temple heart of the Marais: residential on one side, the Seine and Île Saint-Louis on the other.

The rooftop is the most-photographed feature on travel Instagram for a reason. It's a proper multi-level terrace with wooden decking, wine-bar seating, and views that reach east across Île Saint-Louis toward the Panthéon and south over Gare d'Austerlitz and the 13th. Cocktails run €8 to €14, wines by the glass from €5, local beers €6. On Thursday-to-Sunday evenings it fills with a mixed crowd of hostel guests and local 4th-arrondissement twenty-somethings — Paris doesn't have many rooftops open to the public, so the hostel bar effectively becomes a neighborhood bar.

Inside: 4-, 6- and 8-bed dorms with ensuite bathrooms, female-only dorms on two floors, privates that range from a small twin to a three-bed family room. Bunks have reading lights, curtains, in-bed lockers and USB. A full shared kitchen is on the ground floor (rare at this size in Paris), plus a separate laundry room and luggage store.

Location is the reason most people pick it over the other People hostels: 5 minutes walk to Place de la Bastille and the Rue de Lappe bar crawl, 8 minutes to Place des Vosges and the Marais heart, 12 minutes to Notre-Dame across Pont de Sully. Métro Sully-Morland (Line 7) is on the doorstep. Gare de Lyon is a 14-minute walk for onward trains, or two stops on Metro 1.