Hotel Alexandra

The term “design hotel” gets thrown around a lot, but rarely is it applied to a century-old building whose interiors seem to have crystallized sometime around 1955. Copenhagen’s Hotel Alexandra is a time capsule; it’s as if someone fed the pages of a textbook on original mid-century Danish design into a 3-D printer and out popped its guest rooms, culminating in a series of thoroughly realized homages to several of the great Danish furniture designers.

It bears underscoring: the hoteliers are really into Danish furniture here, especially chairs. They’re fond of an anecdote that boils down to the idea that it’s harder (and more praise-worthy) to build a chair than it is to build a library, a movie theater, a warehouse, a city hall, a school and a couple houses, all put together. Their collection of chairs, accumulated over the decades, is impressive indeed. Perhaps more importantly, they’re all there — in the Arne Jacobsen room, in the Hans Wegner room, in the Finn Juhl room, and on it goes — for the sitting in, the way they’re supposed to be, while watching TV or reading one of the hotel’s many books on, you guessed it, the very Danish designers whose work fills the rooms. Though the entry-level rooms are minuscule, the main distinction between the rooms and suites, more than size, is the degree to which they’ve realized the vision of a particular designer.

If you start to feel like you’ve gotten stuck in the middle of the past century, just step outside. Tivoli Gardens and Town Hall Square are virtually right out the door. So are all the shops and restaurants you could want. The staff has created a collection of guidebooks for guests, one with a curated selection of bookshops, another for nightlife, restaurants, flea markets… They’re a knowledgeable lot, and just as proud of present-day Copenhagen, eager to offer recommendations, as they are of its vaunted past. And after you’ve spent the day exploring the city, you can return to your room and plop your tired body into one hell of a chair.