Around the World in Seven Beds: Evoking Eras at Hotel Château Royal

In its 93 guest rooms, layered materials like Art Nouveau tiles and brass hardware reference the Berlin building’s past lives.

Text by

Angela Serratore

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Berlin’s Château Royal has a palimpsest of late-19th-century and 1920s elements still legible in the contemporary hotel. It’s this layering that inspired Irina Kromayer, with each of its 93 rooms using materials that reference the building’s past lives: Art Nouveau tiles, brass and nickel hardware, and oak paneling. "The inspiration," Kromayer says, "came from strolling through the city: the tiled historic underground stations, the museums, the staircases of Berlin’s apartment buildings, the villas in Grunewald, the architecture from Schinkel and Stüler in Berlin and Potsdam."