One of the world's most beautiful art deco hotels is not where you'd expect
Despite the rapid development of the past three decades, many of them are still standing. Art deco's distinctive ziggurats, speed lines and curves are everywhere. 'You just have to look up,' says Tina Kanagaratnam, co-founder of Historic Shanghai, a group devoted to recording and celebrating Shanghai's unique history.
One of the most famous of all these buildings is the Peace Hotel. Commissioned by British tycoon Victor Sassoon and completed in 1929, the hotel was promoted as the most luxurious hotel in the east. As well as exquisite furnishings and interior design, it also had such radical innovations as indoor plumbing, air-conditioning and a sprung floor for dancing. The hotel lived up to the hype, immediately becoming the place to stay or be seen in Shanghai. Its jazz club was said to be the social hub of the city.
Kanagaratnam takes me on an impromptu tour, pointing out some of the easily missed original stained-glass windows. In one of them you can make out the word 'Cathay', the original name of the hotel from the old European word for China.
The level of detail in this space alone is extraordinary, from the sculptures and artworks reflecting the free-flowing fashion of the day to elaborate staircases and decorative ironwork, tiles and marble. It's also home to coffee shop Victor's and the Jasmine Lounge, where you can book in for afternoon tea and dine on delicate cakes and sandwiches while a pianist plays on the hotel's original Steinway. The Old Jazz Bar, behind a timber door with a grill, is an atmospheric space with a long timber bar, small stage, and clothed tables. Every night, anyone can sip a cocktail and listen to the band and guest singers.
After our walk around the hotel and the local neighbourhood, where we spot many other deco masterpieces, Kanagaratnam leaves me to check in. I've been staying in the hotel equivalent of a musty cupboard for three nights and the cost of my one night in the cheapest available room at the Peace Hotel ($564) is almost double those three nights combined, so I'm determined to make the most of it.
Tonight, I'll be sleeping in a building once graced by Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward, Marlene Dietrich and, more recently, Richard Nixon, Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau. They each stayed in one of the hotel's nine original Nation Suites, and it's easy to imagine them at home in these elaborately decorated, glamorous spaces. My room is merely the standard level of uber luxury – in art deco style yet thoroughly modernised with an enormous bathroom, coffee station, walk-in closet and the elegance, light and high ceilings the era was famous for.
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