Hotels

This stately hotel is a classic building in the diplomatic district of Tiergarten. The former Royal Danish Embassy was built in the 1930s by Stuttgart-born architect Johann Emil Schaudt. Das Stue – which means “living room” in Danish – was converted into a 78-room hotel by Axthelm Architects and decorated by Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola. Besides the main lounge there are three libraries, a spa and a 24-hour gym. The hotel also boasts a private entrance into the neighbouring Berlin Zoo, whose resident elephants can be heard and occasionally glimpsed from the windows.

“Hotels are all the same ultimately – I often don’t know which country I am in. Here every room is singular.” So says Barbara Jaeschke, who opened Hotel Oderberger in 2016 in the leafy Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood, just round the corner from the Kulturbrauerei. What is now a cosmopolitan hotel was originally established in 1902 as a public bathhouse. The grand building, designed by architect Ludwig Hoffmann, was fitted with a pool and enough baths to serve the neighbourhood. “When we emptied the place we were left with a pile of 300 bathtubs,” says Jaeschke. It took €20m to transform the building into a luxurious hotel while sympathetically preserving its unique architectural identity. Its sandstone archways and ornamental stair rails have been respectfully restored, as has its magnificent centrepiece: an indoor swimming hall with soaring vaulted ceilings.