Kimpton Hotel Monaco Philadelphia

If you’re familiar with Kimpton’s brand of scaled-up urban boutique hotels, the first thing you’ll likely notice about Hotel Monaco in Philadelphia’s Center City is that this is a slightly brighter, more whimsical look for the prolific hotel group. With Independence Hall essentially next door and the city’s downtown business district just a few minutes away, it’s not the first place you’d expect such a departure — even a relatively subtle one — from the norm. And it’s a welcome relief. The fresh, modern Hotel Monaco lightens up an area where there are already plenty of conservative old hotels.

There’s hardly any danger of losing sight of history here, anyway. Upgrade to the Majestic Suite and you’ll be taking in views of the Liberty Bell from the bathroom’s vintage soaking tub, while Park View and Corner rooms offer views of Independence Hall Park. Well-preserved period details of the hotel’s 1906 Greek Revival building — original marble elevator banks, coffered ceilings — add to the effect without dragging the overall look too far back in time. Gold and blue wallpaper with bold geometric patterns, alongside the sorts of screens and modern bedding that hardly bear mentioning in a new hotel, shares space in the rooms with large marble desks with old-fashioned carved column bases.

For a heavier dose of period design, Colonial- and Federal-style brick row houses pack the cobblestone streets of the nearby Society Hill neighborhood. Since the eighteenth century, many of the city’s most elegant homes have been built here, while the adjacent Old City, once an industrial area but now quite pleasant to stroll, is home to the Betsy Ross House and the former home of Edgar Allan Poe.

Given the setting, it would have been easy for Hotel Monaco to turn the attention outward and play it safe with the interiors. A fresh new hotel may not exactly be revolutionary, but it’s encouraging to see here — and from the proper historical perspective, perhaps striking out anew is not so out of line with the neighborhood’s character after all.