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Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Amsterdam's anarchic new five-star hotel
Inside the Rosewood Amsterdam, which opened at the beginning of May after a decade-long transformation, there are spliffs for sale in a vending machine, and I passed by Johnny Rotten on the landing. Nick Cave and Kate Bush I spotted in the bar. For clarity, though, the spliffs were made of ceramic by the artist Casper Braat, and the musicians are photographic portraits by Anton Corbijn. This new Rosewood likes to wear its art on its sleeve — in fact, it's almost as much of a gallery as a hotel. From the outside, it would be easy to mistake it for another of the city's museums. It's set in the former Palace of Justice, in a building dating back to 1665, and its neoclassical bulk stretches out over almost a block along the central Prinsengracht canal. Most of the group's hotels are in legacy landmark buildings: a former bank in Munich, for instance. In London there's an Edwardian pile in Holborn and, this autumn, there will also be the former US Embassy. Compared to the easygoing cafés and shops around it, the plain, rather grubby façade in Amsterdam (heritage laws mean it can't be cleaned or illuminated at night) cuts a rather stern, almost disapproving figure. It's an image the team here are keen to dispel, envisaging it as much of a local hangout as a gilded retreat for high-net-worth guests. Thomas Harlander, the hotel's managing director, tells me that curious Amsterdamers have been dropping in to explore the building, enjoying the two courtyards landscaped by the High Line designer Piet Oudolf and a modestly priced, well-populated all-day café. The main court room, where high-profile cases (such as the 1980s kidnapping of the brewery billionaire Freddy Heineken) were tried, is now a sprawling library space with a vintage grand piano in one corner and a modern tapestry depicting an AI-realised missing part of Rembrandt's The Night Watch. Its openness is reflected in its design. 'We thought it was important that people could see into the building — transparency is a very Amsterdam thing,' says Piet Boon, whose city-based studio also designed Rosewood's first Japanese resort on Miyakojima. 'During Covid we'd walk around the canals, peering into houses to see how other people lived.' • Read more luxury reviews, advice and insights from our experts Anyone able to peer through my third-floor suite window would glimpse a soft-focus space with curvaceous sofa and chairs, a drinks cabinet with small bottles of ready-mixed cocktails to one side, and a framed set of vintage Amsterdam postcards on the wall. In the bathroom, a white stone tub is positioned by the window, while the bed, backed by a mottled-gold headboard, looks out over gabled houses and the canal (on my arrival, almost on cue, a little boat motors past with a cargo of tulips). Among the 134 rooms are also five 'Houses'. These are apartment-sized suites, such as the Library House, styled in whiter-shade-of-pale bling with windows on two sides and a cascade of small chandeliers, lined by shelves filled with books and collectables. House 020 displays a bespoke collection of jewellery by Bibi van der Velden. But it's the hotel's 1,000-piece art collection that really catches the imagination. The lobby was inspired by the dramatic entrance of the Rijksmuseum, with sightlines that take you straight through to an enormous screen at the far end — the canvas for swirling, fluctuating video art, shifting from vivid floral still-lifes to ethereal classical figures, sourced from the Nxt Museum nearby. Along one corridor runs a series of white, colour-changing discs resembling a vintage radio valve, casting an orange glow over walls and ceiling. I'm particularly taken by a vase in the lobby made entirely of Smurf figures, while Maarten Baas's Grandfather Clock, in which a figure looms into view every minute to scrub out the minute hand and re-draw it, is surprisingly enthralling. In the entrance, Studio Molen's Statica — displayed at last year's Art Basel Hong Kong — is a trellis-like city made up of tiny bronze figures, which can be picked up and slotted back in new homes. There's an abundance of space here, a rarity in this city where many hotels are squeezed into canalside townhouses. The subterranean spa, its swimming pool cast in daylight from a long aperture above, has hammam-style arches and a monastic calm. There's also a space for reformer Pilates and sound therapy, though the 90-minute aromatic restore massage was all I needed. Along a corridor you could ride a tuk-tuk down is the moodily lit Advocatuur bar, flamboyantly dressed with diamond-shaped pendants above the counter and a menu of Indian-inspired cocktails and small plates. (I'm told that the late mayor requested an Indian restaurant here when he brokered the deal, along with Ayurvedic treatments and a club for the city's thriving Indian business community.) Further along is Eeuwen, the main restaurant — an intimate space where a painting of a rather louche young man gazes down at me as I devour Zeeland oysters topped with tingly grapefruit granita, and pork chop with creamy dollops of sea vierge and celeriac puree. The chef David Ordóñez has a nimble way with Dutch ingredients, with an approach that's more bistro than fine dining (little slabs of brioche topped with crab salad is a highlight, and quite rightly arrives on its own little plinth). Amsterdam's food scene has ramped up in recent years, a side of the city the Rosewood is keen to champion. I hop on board Captain Arnaut's Twenties salon boat, moored outside, and take the 90-minute voyage to Der Durgerdam, a small hotel in a village of the same name where the inventive lunch menu includes tomato tartare and a rare pudding of caramelised celeriac pie. The Rosewood is also linking up with Over-Amstel, the new farm from the South African owners of the Newt, taking guests there by boat for yoga and cheese-making sessions. Back at the Rosewood, I'm beckoned downstairs to make my own artistic contribution to the hotel. One of the law court's former holding cells has been turned into a very intimate, palo santo-scented tasting room for the hotel's genever — the OG of gin — distilled in a gleaming still named Martha. The bar manager signs me up for a kopstootje, a Dutch tradition that involved taking the first sip of genever with your arms behind your back, then chasing it with a pickled egg and small glass of beer. The ritual ends with a temporary tattoo rubbed on my wrist and then I graffiti my name on the wall — I'm part of the club. With the genever christened Provo, in honour of a short-lived Sixties anarchist-art movement — which included flooding the city with free bikes painted white to counter the tyranny of the motorcar — it's another irreverent attempt to puncture the building's formality. I wonder how radical a hotel that charges €1,200 a night can actually be, but like the rest of Rosewood Amsterdam, it's a refreshing way of transporting guests beyond the city's clichés. Doubles from £1,200,
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Travel + Leisure
08-05-2025
- Travel + Leisure
First In: T+L's Hotel Review of the Rosewood Amsterdam
Rosewood Amsterdam Set in the city's colossal Palace of Justice, a building which started life as an orphanage dating back to 1665, Rosewood Amsterdam sits on the pricey and princely Prinsengracht (Prince's Canal) in the UNESCO-listed Canal District; it doesn't get more central—or more quintessentially Amsterdam—than this. Dutch design darling Piet Boon douses Rosewood Amsterdam in 'comfortable chic' style, as Boon puts it. It's a maze of high design and high art with more 1,000 pieces on display. With killer cocktails inspired by Amsterdam's punky Provo movement, the hotel's one-of-a-kind Advocatuur is unlike anything else in the city, with a custom-built copper still for making jenever (Dutch gin) and a secret tasting room set in a former jail cell. The hotel's 134 rooms run the gamut from pensive perches over the canal to positively palatial Houses, of which there are five in total. The Amsterdammers are curious—of course they are. They've been waiting 10 years to see inside the city's former Palace of Justice, which just opened as the brand-new Rosewood Amsterdam on May 1, 2025. As hotel builds are now being limited to combat overtourism and Rosewood was the last to receive permission to convert an existing non-hotel building into a hotel, it feels like a monumental, era-defining moment for the city, and the locals know it. It's opening weekend, and I have to weave through groups of them swarming the spacious lobby, having a sniff around in that delightfully direct Dutch way. Their faces don't give away much, but one thing is certain: They're not disappointed. Chic lounge furniture decorate the Grand Library. Daniëlle Siobhán/Rosewood Hotel Group 'It's a place for the people,' Piet Boon, the Dutch interior designer and dreamer behind the new hotel, tells me. We're sitting upstairs in The Grand Library, an impressive event space that served as the Palace of Justice's one-time courtroom. The area where a judge once presided is now dressed with modern tapestry evoking Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" (the most famous painting from the nearby Rijksmuseum), while a 1920s piano with real ivory keys sits to the side. Because this is Amsterdam, there are florals—fireworks of forsythia, frilly crown imperials, and lustrous ranunculus in eye-popping-orange—everywhere I look. However impressive this room is, Boon keeps returning to the lobby. 'We wanted people to feel they are in Amsterdam the moment they walk in,' he says. 'Our inspiration came from the Rijksmuseum, from the museum's central hall. We took cues from its dignity and warmth.' Any guest who has walked through the museum's Gallery of Honor, a long corridor leading toward "The Night Watch," will see the comparison with the hotel's long lobby, leading here to a digital art piece as a focal point instead of a Rembrandt. The staircase and interior of the lobby. Daniëlle Siobhán/Rosewood Hotel Group The lobby has a fantastic sense of theatricality, and in comparison to the city's dollhouse proportions, it does indeed feel grand, but it's no stuffy museum. I would describe it as the city's living room with help-yourself pedestal plates piled with crumbly cookies and art designed to be interacted with: The entry is marked with a Studio Molen Statica installation with little movable pieces. Farther on, an art vending machine is displayed, selling limited-edition Casper Braat marble-and-gold sculptures. The mini sculptures pay tribute to the city with designs of canal houses, cones of frites, and stroopwafels. By my visit (on the third day of opening), all of the sculptures of joints (a cool €800 a pop) have been sold out from the vending machine. The check-in desk is tucked off to the side as not to feel like a barrier, and smiley doormen, dressed in the shade of a well-aged Barolo, act as greeters not gatekeepers. 'You can do your thing without feeling like someone is going to ask you what you're doing here,' says Boon. 'It's comfortable chic.' After a few nights of playing with the art, sipping house-made gin, and bedding down in a well-appointed room over the ribboning canal and elm trees, I can't help but agree. Here are the highlights of my stay. The Rooms Piet Boon first rose to fame as a designer of money-is-no-object private residences, so it's no surprise that the rooms here feel both intimate and upmarket; mini apartments with Dutch soul and quirky art. Canal-view rooms over the Prinsengracht will no doubt be most popular, while some smaller rooms overlook tiny alleys. Throughout, there are design nods to the building's former purpose with pleated headboards evoking the folds of judicial robes and legal scales doubling as objets d'art, while the muted color palette feels lifted from a Dutch Old Master. At the top of the offering sits the hotel's five Houses, stunning in their size and style, especially Library House. Based in the Palace of Justice's former library, this suite is laid out as an enfilade with an entrance on each end and detailed touches like snow-white crown molding, colossal light features, and enough books to make Belle jealous. Food and Drink Ten years ago, when the Palace of Justice first hit the market, Amsterdam's then-mayor insisted that whoever took over the landmark must infuse some sense of Indian culture into the space, as a tribute to the Netherlands' large Indian population. Rosewood answered with Advocatuur, outfitted with two tandoori ovens to serve snacks like paneer tikka and baked samosas. But first and foremost, this is a bar and the star of the show is the cocktails, overseen by Yann Bouvignies, who helped make Scarfes at Rosewood London into an award-winning institution. Described by Bouvignies as a 'clash of law and rebellion,' this color-drenched bar even has a copper still (named Irene, after a key figure in Amsterdam's 1960s counterculture Provo movement) distilling a house blend of jonge jenever, branded Provo. An unmissable experience: Go for a Provo tasting in one of the former holding cells. The bar also serves its own beer, POJ (Palace of Justice) Lager, decorated with an illustration of the hotel and made in collaboration with Jopen brewery based in Haarlem, Netherlands. Outfitted like an English country garden with stone patio flooring and lemon trees, Eeuwen (Dutch for 'centuries') is the spot for breakfast, lunch, and formal dinners. Service isn't there yet and mistakes are aplenty in these early days, but there's potential—especially in plates like North Sea shrimp croquettes; oysters from the Dutch province of Zeeland; and pillow-like poffertjes (Dutch pancakes) for breakfast. Open all day and already a hit with the locals is The Court, an outdoor courtyard dressed in red-and-cream striped awnings and cheery pink tulips. From Piet Ouldolf (the landscaping legend behind New York's Highline), this is the spot for tea, served on pretty Richard Ginori porcelain plates, and tompouces, the Netherlands' version of a mille-feuille. Activities and Experiences Grandmother Clock by Maarten Baas and Art Statica by Frederik Molenschot. Daniëlle Siobhán/Rosewood Hotel Group Rosewood is famed for its sense of place ethos, and here, guests are very much encouraged to get out and about to discover the city's nearby blockbuster attractions, as well as hidden pockets. The hotel has its own classic saloon boat, a yet-to-be-named beauty hewn from teak and mahogany and dating back to 1924. The boat has been fully restored and made electric, and Captain Arnold whisks guests off for nearby adventures in the Duivendrechtse Polder for farm visits or the impossibly charming fishing village of Durgerdam for lunch at De Mark Restaurant. Bicycles (including e-bikes and cargo bikes) are available to rent from the hotel. With more than 1,000 art pieces on display, the hotel also offers tours of its art collection. Highlights include the Casper Braat art vending machine; colorful Frank Stella reliefs from Rosewood's private collection in Hong Kong; and two Maarten Baas clock reimaginings ('Grandfather Clock' and 'Grandmother Clock'), with similar pieces found in the Rijksmuseum and Schiphol Airport. There's also a gallery space for rotating exhibitions. The Spa The indoor pool at the Asaya Spa. Daniëlle Siobhán/Rosewood Hotel Group Set on a subterranean level but softly aglow with natural light thanks to light wells in the garden above, Rosewood's Asaya spa is a temple to serenity. A rarity in the city, the pale sapphire heated pool stretches nearly 40 feet and is flanked by a generously proportioned hot tub (as well as sauna and steam room). Treatments use products by Subtle Energies, Barbara Sturm, and The|Tides, a local wellness brand that uses ingredients like seaweed and algae in its potions. Family-friendly Offerings Benney by Frankey, a statue of the hotel's unofficial mascot cat. Daniëlle Siobhán/Rosewood Hotel Group Despite its achingly cool vibes, Rosewood Amsterdam welcomes families with babysitting services, interconnecting rooms, and family pool time every day from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. On the hotel's retail menu, there are a few items for younger travelers, like children's raincoats and stuffed animals of the hotel's unofficial mascot cat Benny, based off of one of the hotel's art pieces by Amsterdam street artist Frankey. Accessibility and Sustainability The hotel has two fully accessible accommodations, and there is barrier-free access to public areas, including the spa and dining outlets. In terms of sustainability, windows are energy efficient to conserve heat; rainwater and wastewater is used in the garden; and systems such as Greenview and Winnow have been implemented to track carbon emissions and manage food waste in real time. The hotel also has a sustainable sourcing policy, prioritizing certified sustainable ingredients for its menus. The hotel's boat is also fully electric. For the local community, the hotel offers Dutch lessons and culinary training programs for underserved groups. Location Rosewood Amsterdam is about a 10-minute drive to Centraal Station, which has direct rail connections to Schiphol Airport and Brussels, Paris, and London via Eurostar trains. The hotel has a fantastically central address (no car is needed), and famous sites, including some of the city's top theaters and the Museumplein, are just a short walk away. How to Get the Most Value Out of Your Stay Rosewood Amsterdam is part of American Express Fine Hotels & Resorts, offering the following benefits: room upgrade upon availability; daily breakfast for two; $100 credit for food and beverage or spa; and guaranteed late check-out until 4:00 p.m. Centurion offers similar benefits, but with a guaranteed upgrade and a $300 hotel credit for stays of two nights or more. Nightly rates at Rosewood Amsterdam start from $1,361.
