Cortiina Hotel

Some high-design boutique hotels come on like your “cool” uncle, the one who’s wearing a lampshade for a hat by the end of Christmas dinner; so determined are they to be fun that it’s almost enough to put you off the very idea of fun for life. So it’s a relief when a hotel can be confident and visually striking without continually cracking jokes and trying hard to impress.

The Cortiina’s rather serious approach has proved to be eminently suited to Munich, and it’s managed to be awfully hip (witness the crowd in the lobby bar, always the measure of a hotel’s social success) and at the same time completely dignified, even grown-up.
It’s minimal and austere throughout, and not in a cheap way either — the materials are rich and smartly selected, from the unfinished flagstone walls of the lobby to the oak floors and paneling in the bedrooms and the Jura stone in the bathrooms.

The slightly beige linens on the bed do more than just accentuate the cream-and-brown palette — they’re unbleached, environmentally friendly, and just closer to the pure Platonic cotton-ness of cotton. The idea is a bit “urban resort” — calm and restful, almost secluded once you’re in your room, though in reality you’re in the heart of Munich, just off the Marienplatz, a location that comes in handy, since here, without whimsical design gestures to amuse you, you’re responsible for your own entertainment.