Hotel Les Nuits

If we all know what a film noir looks like, then we can probably get away with extending the metaphor to hotels as well. Hotel Les Nuits is a Belgian noir hotel in Antwerp’s fashion district — which, though it’s not about to knock Paris off its perch in terms of commercial volume, is a genuine style capital, a fashionable, forward-looking and design-minded town.

The guest rooms, by a designer based in the neighborhood, are compact but comfortable, open-plan and overlaid with quirky noir-ish fittings like black-lacquered headboards or gleaming black subway tiles in the bathrooms, plus unexpected Asian details to remind us that even a stylized hotel in the fashion district can allude, successfully, to Antwerp’s trading-port roots.

The hotel’s restaurant, Les Jours, offers an evolving brasserie-style menu in the capable hands of chef Filip De Pauw. And in good weather, the restaurant extends to a sunny rooftop terrace decked in light wood. It’s one of several public spaces — along with conference facilities — that come as surprises in such a small hotel.

Given the location, there’s obviously no shortage of shopping to do. It’s an appropriate base from which to explore Antwerp’s avant-garde design and clothing shops. Yet push just a little beyond the attractive new storefronts and you’ll quickly be reminded that people have been buying and selling luxury goods here (not least diamonds) for centuries. For all the work its youthful designers have done to ornament it, Antwerp still has all its cobblestone streets and old canals and its profusion of spindly church steeples — a look unlikely to go out of style anytime soon.

How to get there:
Hotel Les Nuits is 15 minutes away from Antwerp International Airport.