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Park-Hyatt-Chicago-Lobby

16 May 2013

Park Hyatt parts with its Richter

If one single factor distinguished the elegant Park Hyatt Chicago from other hotels of its calibre, it was the painting that hung in its lobby: Gerhard Richter’s monumental photo-realist image of the duomo in Milan, Domplatz, Mailand. Happily for the Hyatt family, it sold, at Sotheby’s New … More


sonja-henie-peter-blake-resized

2 May 2013

Cool Norwegian art is hot in London too

Of all the art in The Thief hotel in Oslo (click here for my recent FT piece), this photograph of Norwegian figure-skating legend Sonja Henie, enhanced by Sir Peter Blake with diamond dust, is the most enchanting. It hangs in the Oslo Suite, which is … More


claridges

2 May 2013

Noma’s legacy lives on at Claridge’s

To lunch at Claridge’s in the room they call the Foyer and Reading Room, which I’d hitherto associated only with breakfast and tea. But what a revelation the current lunch and dinner menu is! My main course is described in the tell-it-like-it-is fashion of now … More


IMG_0961

2 April 2013

New building in Baku

It’s possible to deride the new Azerbaijani taste in architecture for its rather too literal approach. The Flame Towers, which flicker with 10,000 light-emitting diodes, were designed to recall tongues of fire; the soon-to-open carpet museum has been built in the shape of a rolled-up … More


photo

2 April 2013

Easter in Baden Baden

Back from Baden Baden – an idealised place of exquisite buildings; wealthy, rather literary Russians; and other Europeans convinced – not entirely unfoundedly – that there is something in the water that approximates to an elixir of youth, or at least delays death. It’s also … More


67

7 February 2013

Поздравляю Aeroflot!

The Bosco tracksuits worn by the Russian Olympic team and favoured by Russian long-haul travellers as the leisurewear of choice may court derision from those who believe they have a more developed fashion sense. But Aeroflot has been voted “Europe’s most stylish airline” by users … More


BBC TVC

7 February 2013

Television Centre to become a hotel

The conversion of morgues (Willow Court in Tasmania), prisons (Four Seasons Sultanahmet in Istanbul) and boarding schools (Coworth Park in Berkshire) into hotels may have become commonplace. But even so it comes as a surprise that the “inner ring” of the BBC’s former Television Centre … More


william_orpen_the_cafe_royal_london

29 January 2013

Dress codes be damned

To lunch at the Café Royal, about which I have to admit to misgivings mostly thanks to the perplexing dress code in its fabled Grill Room, which asks that your clothing be “celebrative” (does that mean celebratory or like a celebrity?) and dictates that “ladies … More


stue_phototour_920x500_10_0

23 January 2013

Two new hotels in Berlin

If Munich is hoping to divert the flow of tourists to Berlin by hiring the Scandinavian artist partnership Elmgreen & Dragset to breath life into its main squares with a year-long programme of installations (here’s the piece I wrote for the FT), then the capital … More


Palazzo_papadopoli_gran_canal_san_polo

18 January 2013

An Aman in Venice

Having opened in Montenegro in 2011 and Greece in 2012, Aman Resorts, whose founder, Adrian Zecha bought the company back from the Indian property conglomerate DLF late last year, are continuing to expand into in the eastern Mediterranean with the opening of an outpost in … More


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