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Art Hotels
Hotels where the paintings, antiques and restored rooms are the reason to stay.
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Athens, Greece
Hotel Grande Bretagne
Syntagma Square is the front step. Parliament stands across the road, and the changing of the guard happens within sight of the lobby doors.
This is a nineteenth-century hotel, and it shows it gladly. Oil paintings, tapestries and antique furniture fill the public rooms. Many guest rooms keep the same classical styling, with marble baths and heavy drapery.
Up top, the GB Roof Garden restaurant looks straight across to the Acropolis. There is also a spa, and the hotel belongs to Marriott's Luxury Collection.
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Buenos Aires, Argentina
Alvear Art Hotel
Retiro is a quiet, leafy part of the city centre, and the hotel stands on Suipacha street, a few blocks from Plaza San Martín. It is the younger sibling of the Alvear Palace in Recoleta.
Art is the organising idea. Sculpture, canvases and design objects appear in corridors, lounges and the main restaurant, where a glass ceiling lets in daylight over the tables.
Rooms are modern and calm by comparison. On the roof, a heated pool sits under a glass cover, with the city skyline around it.
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New York, United States
The Chatwal
West 44th Street puts the theatres of Broadway a short walk away. Fitting, because the building began as the clubhouse of The Lambs, a theatrical society, in a design by the architect Stanford White.
A restoration by Thierry Despont gave it an Art Deco character: lacquer, polished metal, leather, and framed portraits that nod to the club's stage history.
The Lambs Club restaurant keeps the old name alive downstairs. Rooms are compact, as in most of Midtown, but finished with real care.