Art Hotels

Hotels where the collection is structural rather than decorative.

Three hotels where the art is structural. In each case the collection, the facade or the building's own history is the reason to walk through the door, and the bedroom is what happens afterwards.

The Merchant Hotel

Belfast, United Kingdom

The Merchant occupies the former headquarters of the Ulster Bank, a High Victorian building in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter whose banking hall now serves as the dining room. The proportions were designed to impress depositors, and they still do the job: a barrel-vaulted ceiling, a domed skylight, marble columns that go all the way up.

What makes the hotel interesting is that it did not stop at preserving the old wing. A later extension added an Art Deco half with its own colour palette and its own rhythm, so guests effectively choose between two centuries when they choose a room. The seam between them is visible and deliberate.

Art here means the building itself plus the commissioned pieces hung through the corridors, and the staff are used to guests who arrive to look rather than to sleep. Afternoon tea in the great hall is the ritual most people come for.

Victorian bank building
Two design wings
Cathedral Quarter
Domed dining hall

The Siam

Bangkok, Thailand

The Siam sits on the Chao Phraya in the Dusit district, a short boat ride from the older parts of the city and far enough upriver to feel separate from them. It was designed as an Art Deco compound in black and white, arranged around a central atrium planted with trees.

The collection is the point. Antiques, photographs, signage and salvaged objects gathered over decades are placed throughout the public rooms — not arranged behind glass, but used as furniture and fittings, which means the hotel reads as a private collection that outgrew its own walls.

Rooms are suites and pool villas, most of them generous by Bangkok standards. A handful of traditional teak houses were relocated to the site and rebuilt, and these hold the quietest accommodation on the property.

Riverside compound
Art Deco monochrome
Antique collection
Relocated teak houses

Grand Hotel Tremezzo

Lake Como, Italy

Tremezzo opened in 1910, facing the Grigne mountains across the water, and the Art Nouveau facade has been kept more or less as it was drawn. The hotel belongs to the lake's belle-epoque generation, when villas along this shore were built for long summers rather than short stays.

Inside, the period detail is intact enough to be its own exhibit: stucco, chandeliers, a staircase designed to be descended slowly. Restoration work has been continuous but conservative, and the original decorative schemes survive in the main salons.

A floating pool sits out on the lake itself, which is the modern flourish. Otherwise the property is remarkable mostly for how little it has been persuaded to change.

Opened 1910
Art Nouveau facade
Lakefront salons
Floating pool