courtesy of The Leading Hotels of the World Ltd. and Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan

Luxury hotels must strike a balance between sweeping you into another world and making you feel at home. Discerning travelers want more than amenities, and seek out hotels that preserve and promote culture.

Hotelier Alex Ohebshalom worked closely with Swedish interior architect and product designer Martin Brudnizki to transform a 1907 Italian Renaissance Revival bank by McKim, Mead & White that was erected on the former site of a Gilded Age mansion into a pampering and welcoming environment. The collaborators carefully examined the extant arches, moldings, and other mansion features evoking the period of U.S. history from the 1870s to about 1900 which took its name from Mark Twain’s lesser-known political novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, co-written with his friend, and fellow essayist and novelist, Charles Dudley Warner, to preserve the best facets of that bygone era while creating a new “today” for the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan.

While the novel satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America, Twain – who enjoyed bourbon and was close friends with self-made tycoon Henry H. Rogers – would have been unlikely to refuse an old fashioned from socialite Charlotte Goodridge, who lived in the mansion until her death in 1902.

Earlier this month, guests filled The Cellar, a private dining room at the hotel, admiring the walls of geometric marquetry which was popular during the Gilded Age. Enjoying cocktails by The Portrait Bar and passed canape and charcuterie by Chef Andrew Carmellini , as well as a performance by Tony-nominated actress and singer Lorna Courtney , guests indulged in the present moment while the room evoked the past extravagance.

Courtesy The Leading Hotels of The World and Fifth Avenue Hotel

The location was perfect for celebrating the launch of Culture , the second volume in an ongoing travel book series by The Leading Hotels of the World (LHW), following Design, in partnership with Phaidon , Monacelli , and New York-based media company The Slowdown , earlier this month. Ohebshalom and Brudnizki envisioned a character when creating the hotel, a flâneur, or a person who strolls around a city observing the world around them while blending in with the crowd. That is often how travelers want to feel in a new city, aware of the environment and not obviously an outsider. Flâneur Hospitality spent a decade restoring the building, preserving the original brick and limestone Renaissance-style palazzo and magnifying it with a 24-story modern glass tower by Perkins Eastman .

Timeless elegance and exceptional service abound as you’re greeted by the everpresent but never intrusive hospitality experts at De LEurope Amsterdam. It’s hard to imagine a reasonable request that’s met with anything less than “of course!” For example, visiting Amsterdam after attending TEFAF-Maastricht – Europe’s crown jewel of art fairs, some 125 miles away in the southernmost part of the Netherlands, close to the borders with Belgium and Germany – demands a continuation of grand tradition. Time after time, De LEurope Amsterdam exceeds expectations.

Encounter centuries of history, beginning in 1482, when Emperor Maximilian I ordered the construction of stone walls and a fortress to protect the town from attacks. The main tower, Het Rondeel, stood on the site of present-day De L’Europe Amsterdam . The location’s hospitality legacy began in 1638, when an inn was built partly on the foundations of the fort. This simple guest house later adorned the side along the Amstel with a wall decorated with Renaissance flair. After numerous closures and renovations, H. J. Wolters reopened Het Rondeel in1845, as the first hotel in Amsterdam that served and catered to families.

Het Rondeel was auctioned to a bank in 1894, and the building remained empty for two years before the Dutch Hotel Company demolished it and built a new hotel. The company agreed to purchase the former Hotel de L’Europe on the Prins Hendrikkade in exchange for the name.

Mr. H. Martins, the managing director of the original Hotel de L’Europe was appointed the same role at the new location on the Nieuwe Doelenstraat, which opened in 1896. Throughout the century, the hotel was expanded and refurbished to meet dynamic demands of luxury travelers.

Dutch businessman Alfred “Freddy” Heineken , a leader of the brewing empire created in 1864 by his grandfather Gerard Adriaan Heineken, was a frequent guest of the hotel in the 1950’s, and he eventually bought it, making De L’Europe the first and only family-owned luxury hotel in Amsterdam. By 1992, the hotel was remodeled to offer 100 modern rooms, two restaurants, a bar, a terrace on the Amstel river, several halls, a fitness center, a shop, and a business center.

Art lovers will appreciate the easy walk to world-leading museums, such as Rijksmuseum , the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history, Stedelijk , a museum for modern art, and contemporary art and design, and the Van Gogh Museum , dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries.

Polly Brown; We Folk

A comprehensive redesign in 2020 enabled De L’Europe to emerge from the pandemic in its current grandeur. Amsterdam-based interior design firm Nicemakers restyled the rooms, public areas, private event rooms, three restaurants, and the bar, to pay homage to the rich cultural history while boasting contemporary creature comforts.

Let Culture serve as your travel companion. The book itself lends to a leisurely study of the world’s best hotels, drawing readers into an opulent chair – perhaps a fauteuil or a bergère – while admiring its plush cover.

Leading Hotels of the World (LHW)

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“‘Culture’ is as hard to define as ‘beauty’ or ‘taste,’ but we know it when we see it,” As Pico Iyer writes in the forward, “It is that hidden treasure that goes beyond simply seeing the sights and gives us a new pair of eyes.” Culture gives readers exactly that. This compelling volume dives beneath the surface of glamour, offering a deeper, more considered definition of luxury.”