Dorint Kurfürstendamm Berlin

Berlin is a city of many centers, or of no center at all — same thing, really, and in the end you’ve got to quit meditating on that seeming paradox and just pick a neighborhood. Old East Berlin is where you’ll find the cutting-edge nightlife, Mitte is the booming commercial center, and for shopping, particularly of the high-end designer variety, it’s hard to beat the Kurfürstendamm, West Berlin’s famous boulevard.

And just off the Ku’damm you’ll find the Dorint Kurfürstendamm Berlin, a hotel that makes much of its tinge of Frenchness, but is, at bottom, distinctly German. Nowhere else do they have hotels quite like this — biggish, bigger than a boutique, and more businesslike too, yet still impeccably designed, contemporary in style, and loaded with paintings and sculptures by contemporary German artists, from the public spaces on up to the rooms.

We all love tiny, intimate boutiques, but bigger can be better, when it means access to big-hotel amenities: the Dorint has not one but two restaurants, including a contemporary French brasserie, as well as an elegant lobby bar, a well-equipped business center, a fitness room and a full-service spa. There’s something to be said for exclusivity, sure; but there’s something marvelously egalitarian about a hotel that can be stylish and at the same time so practical and unpretentious.