Sleep with Art: 6 hotels that can compete with Museums

If you take a responsible approach to choosing a hotel, then perhaps the cultural part of the trip will be able to be completed without visiting crowded museums. There are several hotels in the world that have such collections of works of art that they look down on other specialized institutions. For example, in Rome's Waldorf Astoria you can admire the originals of Andy Warhol, and the Swiss Dolder Grand has a rich collection of sculptures.

Waldorf Astoria, located on Monte Mario Hill, boasts stunning views from the window and the only restaurant in the city with three Michelin stars. But he is known primarily for his art collection, the approximate cost of which is more than 700 million dollars.

In total, the hotel has more than a thousand exhibits created in different periods, from the XVI to the XX century. Among them there are historical artifacts — for example, a cradle ordered by Napoleon for his son. The suites feature paintings by Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana.

Other Waldorf Astoria hotels are also richly decorated. For example, there are more than 600 works by contemporary Chinese artists in Beijing, and 900 works by graduates of the Berlin Art Academy in Berlin. But this, of course, does not go to any comparison with the Roman collection.

The Pulitzer Hotel consists of 25 individual houses built on the banks of the Princes Canal in the XVII and XVIII centuries. The hotel's designer, Jaku Strauss, spent the night in each of the 225 rooms to figure out how to furnish it. Both the hotel and the collection attached to it were originally owned by the Pulitzer family, in particular the grandson of the founder of the journalism prize, Joseph Pulitzer. The owners changed, but the name was proudly left after the reconstruction in 2016.

In the Art Collector's Suite, a guest can feel like a collector himself: the walls are almost entirely hung with paintings. Especially impressive is the canvas "Branch Hals" by the Dutchman Thierry de Cromier, a kind of remake of the "Banquet of Officers" by Frans Hals Sr., the founder of the Dutch realistic portrait. Only instead of meat and wine, burgers and beer cans are on the table.

Pulitzer also has apartments for antique lovers and book lovers — each with a corresponding collection.

The Collector's Hotels is the common name of three hotels owned by the Bergtsson family: Lord Nelson, Lady Hamilton and Victory Hotel. In Lord Nelson in The Old Town has an extensive collection of artifacts related to the history of navigation: vintage maps, ship models, commemorative coins, compasses, miniatures with sea battles on ivory with the image of Admiral Nelson.

The Lady Hamilton Hotel was decorated by the family with statuettes and paintings on the theme of eternal femininity. At the reception, guests are greeted by a wooden statue of Lady Hamilton herself.

Everything that remained was placed in the Victory Hotel, but it is here that the main pride of the family is kept in a glass case in the lobby — a letter from Admiral Nelson to his beloved Lady Hamilton, who was nicknamed Marilyn Monroe of the XVIII century.

The V8 Hotel is part of the Motor World exhibition center, organized at the former Stuttgart airfield. The hotel is located in the building of the dispatch center, decorated in the Art Deco style. There is a collection of racing cars on display in the lobby, the most well-deserved of them come from the 20s.

Cars are also used in the interiors of the rooms: the beds in many rooms are a kind of centaurs: the front part is made of the hood of a vintage Volkswagen, Mercedes or Morris Minor. There is also a Car Wash room with huge brushes, an open—air cinema with a Cadillac and Route 66 with a portrait of James Dean and an awning over the bed.

The owner of the Das Tyrol Boutique Hotel, Helena Ramsbacher, is an avid art collector. Part of her collection is represented in the hotel, and Frau Ramsbacher personally selected paintings for each of the 30 rooms and for the common areas of the hotel. The central element is contemporary works by Viennese and foreign artists, many of which are related to the Austrian capital.

The Ramsbacher collection would do credit to many galleries in Europe: here are the thoughtful realism of Bernard Ammerer, abstract compositions by Loretta Stats, and ironic designs by Elke Huala, including "Vegetarian" — something like a tribal African sculpture with an aquarium belly stuffed with vegetables. The hotel is located in the Museum Quarter of Vienna, which creates a very pleasant context.

The collection collected in this hotel is so rich that interested guests are given an iPad with a guide to all the works presented. A tramp in underpants reclines behind the reception desk — Dwayne Hanson's installation "Traveler", the bar is decorated with a "Large retrospective Canvas" by Andy Warhol, and the patio is a sculpture "Woman with Fruit" by Fernando Botero.

The collection of sculptures in Dolder Grand is considered the best in Zurich — in a city where, by the way, there are fifty museums. Like the hotel itself, the entire collection belongs to financier Urs Schwarzenbach and is estimated at 45 million Swiss francs.