Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Copenhagen - designed by Arne Jacobsen
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From the outside the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Copenhagen looks like nothing so much as a 1960’s block of inner-city council flats. But this is no ordinary high rise. Step inside and it will be instantly obvious why this luxury hotel’s fame has spread far and wide.
This building is a prime example of what happened just over 40 years ago when big-name Scandinavian designer Arne Jacobsen was asked to work his magic on the interior of what was then pretty well the only skyscraper in the Danish capital.
Mind you, if you had visited the hotel, slap bang in the centre of Copenhagen’s heart, just a few years ago you could still have been forgiven for thinking you had made a major mistake. Jacobsen’s internationally-renowned design masterpieces, such as the Swan and Egg chairs, were suffering badly from the ravages of time and fighting for space with less than inspiring later additions from the standard hotel furnishing catalogues.
Now that Jacobsen has taken on a nearly god-like status among the international design community, the hotel chain has been spending a tidy sum refurbishing the Radisson SAS Royal, not exactly in Jacobsen’s original design but based very closely on it. The result is an impressive piece of living history in a comfortable modern hotel.
The reworking of this Copenhagen hotel is just part of the renaissance which has been quietly bubbling away since 2000 when, in a hail of publicity, the first fixed link between the Danish city and Malmo in Sweden, the Oresund Bridge, opened to both rail and road traffic, cutting the journey time between the two metropolises to just over half an hour. No longer do visitors leave with memories of little more than the famous Little Mermaid, the Tivoli amusement gardens, open sandwiches, Carlsberg lager and, in winter at least, bitterly cold weather.
Tip: If you want the full designer experience, ask for room 606 on the sixth floor, which has been recreated just as Jacobsen intended.
Hammerichsgade 1, Copenhagen, Denmark
Cost standard double room: £100 - £200 per night, family room: £100 - £200 per night
Services fitness equipment, parking, hotel restaurant, hotel bar, room service, business services, internet access
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