SO/ Berlin Das Stue

SO/ Berlin Das Stue is housed in what was once Berlin’s Royal Danish Embassy, and today it serves as one of the city’s most distinctive boutique hotels, full of inspiring contrasts and confident design ideas.

Hotels these days have a few problems in common—among them, all too often, is a distinct lack of grandeur. And if that’s what you’re after, you might be better off converting an existing building into a hotel, rather than building your own bed box from the ground up. And this is exactly what the creators of SO/ Berlin Das Stue did.

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.

Bold design ideas and art, in particular, set this hotel apart — ideas such as the fun sculptures inspired by the occupants of the Berlin zoo.

The Cinco Restaurant

The designer of the hotel is not the only Spanish accent here. Also Spanish (or Catalan, to be precise) is the chef, Paco Pérez—and it’s a measure of how far we’ve come that the nationality of a hotel’s chef is a topic of interest. In today’s boutique hotels, however, the chef might have nearly as much influence over the guest’s experience as the designer does, and here that influence is certainly a positive one.

Pérez’s work at Cinco, the hotel’s fine dining restaurant, has earned a Michelin star along with heaps of acclaim. 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.

The main text of the review with contributions by Tablet Hotels.

in our opinion

What we love

• Eye-catching pieces of decor, such as the light installations—especially the jumble of copper pots in the restaurant, or the spectacular chandelier in the main hall
• The atmosphere. Sophisticated grandeur echoes in the fabric of the building, but its interiors have more of a relaxed ambiance. In Danish das stue means “living room”—that's an apt description of the mood
• Good location—with easy access to the zoo (obviously), but also just a short walk away from most of Berlin’s sights
• Michelin-star dining at the Cinco by Paco Perez concept restaurant
• Inventive cocktails, based on forgotten 1920s and 1930s recipes, at the Stue Bar and Lounge

What you should know

• This is a non-smoking hotel
• Friday and Saturday are DJ Nights at Stue Bar and Lounge
• Make sure to give your taxi driver the Tiergarten address as there is more than one Drakestrasse

*This review contains affiliate links at no extra cost to you.