Americans flocked to the city in droves. A warm fall sun shone through the vast glass roof. The dealers brought their very best pieces. And the Art Basel brand did what it does.

Art Basel Paris, which opened to V.I.P. visitors on Wednesday and runs through Sunday, is the first full-scale, fully-branded Paris event for the fair group since its Swiss-based parent company, MCH Group, took over the running of France’s flagship art fair in 2022. MCH, whose biggest shareholder is James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems investment firm, already holds slickly organized and marketed shows in Hong Kong, Miami Beach and Basel, Switzerland.

Since the takeover, two smaller iterations, awkwardly titled Paris+ par Art Basel, had been held in a temporary venue near the Eiffel Tower. The rebranded fair — now held in the recently restored Grand Palais, an Art Nouveau exhibition hall originally built for the 1900 World’s Fair — this year features 195 galleries, a 27 percent increase on Paris+.

“There is an atmosphere of the 19th century — but that’s glorious. It adds to the Parisian grandeur,” said the Antwerp-based contemporary art collector Luc Haenen, who was wearing sunglasses in the sun-drenched nave of the Grand Palais.

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