So/ Berlin Das Stue

Hotels these days have a few problems in common; among them, all too often, is a distinct lack of grandeur. It’s not the sort of thing that springs naturally from what is typically little more than a box, jammed with as many beds as it can reasonably hold. That’s why, if it’s grandeur you’re after, you might be better off converting an existing building into a hotel, rather than building your own bedbox from the ground up. Das Stue, in Berlin’s Tiergarten district, is a case in point. This Thirties embassy building was built, at least in part, to convey a grand impression — and its atmosphere, after a massive architectural overhaul by Annette Axthelm and an interior renovation by the renowned Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola, is about as far as you can get from the boxes-and-boxes sameness of the typical contemporary hotel.

The spa, however, is German through and through, the architecture crisply modernist and the treatments mixing holistic influences and scientific exactitude. And the rooms, it must be said, are more than a bit Danish, owing to the building’s history as the Danish embassy — if nothing else, you’re sure to recognize Arne Jacobsen’s Egg chairs. The views, however, place you squarely in Berlin; if you’re not facing the interior courtyard you’ll look out over the Tiergarten or the Berlin Zoo.