Design and art hotels in Luxembourg City, ranked

The real design hotels

Hôtel Le Place d’Armes is the top of this list — a Relais & Châteaux with genuinely considered interiors across seven connected townhouses on the main square. Bright colours, layered antiques, an interior courtyard that works year-round. Hôtel Simoncini in Ville Haute is smaller and pairs contemporary art (the owner runs a gallery downstairs) with plain modern rooms — the art is on the walls, not in the design itself. Hôtel Vauban is a well-priced boutique that punches above its weight for €160-€220 a night.

The Melia Luxembourg on Kirchberg is a corporate design job — impressive lobby, standardised rooms. Sofitel Le Grand Ducal has the atrium view but the rooms are safe hotel-modern. Neither will excite anyone who has stayed in real design hotels elsewhere in Europe.

What Luxembourg does and does not have

The city does not have a Standard, a Hoxton, a 25hours or anything from the international design-hotel circuit. What it has is a handful of independently run boutique hotels — mostly family businesses — that care about their interiors within the constraints of small historic buildings. That is a different thing, and better than it sounds. Le Place d’Armes in particular is one of the best small hotels in the Benelux.

If your idea of a design hotel is a lobby DJ and a rooftop bar, Luxembourg will not deliver. If it is well-chosen furniture, real art, and staff who know both, book Le Place d’Armes or Simoncini and you will be happy.