Hotel Fasano Rio de Janeiro

Avenida Vieira Souto runs the length of Ipanema beach, and number 80, towards the Arpoador end, is where Rogério Fasano placed his family's first hotel outside São Paulo. Hotel Fasano Rio de Janeiro opened in 2007 with interiors by Philippe Starck and a rooftop pool that looks along the sand to the twin peaks of Dois Irmãos. Within a year it had become the luxury hotel in Rio de Janeiro where visiting musicians and film crews stayed, and it has kept that position since.

History

The Fasano name goes back to 1902, when Vittorio Fasano, newly arrived from Italy, opened the Brasserie Paulista in São Paulo. Four generations of restaurants followed. Rogério Fasano, the current head of the family, opened the first Hotel Fasano in the Jardins district of São Paulo in 2003, and chose Rio for the second. The Rio hotel opened in 2007 and was followed by Fasano Boa Vista in the São Paulo countryside and Fasano Punta del Este in Uruguay. The Rio house set the template the group has used since: a restaurant and bar that locals use as much as guests, and interiors that borrow from Brazilian modernism rather than from international hotel design.

Architecture and design

Starck's brief was to make a beach hotel that felt like Rio in the late 1950s, the years of bossa nova and the Copacabana of Tom Jobim. He used jacaranda and other Brazilian hardwoods, leather, and furniture by Brazilian modernists including Sergio Rodrigues, whose Mole armchair appears in the public rooms. The rooftop is the hotel's best-known space: a long infinity pool edged in wood decking, loungers facing the sea, and a bar. Guests in the rooftop pool look over the avenue to the beach and the Atlantic beyond, with the Dois Irmãos hills closing the view to the west.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has around 90 rooms and suites, most of them facing the ocean across the avenue. Sea-facing rooms have balconies, floors of dark wood and bathrooms finished in marble; the top suites are on the upper floors with the widest view. The look is warm rather than minimal: wooden slats, cream linen, 1950s shapes in the furniture. Beachside service includes chairs, umbrellas and towels set up on the sand in front of the hotel each morning.

Dining

Fasano al Mare, on the ground floor, is the family's Italian cooking applied to the Rio coast: seafood, fresh pasta and risotto, served in a room that opens towards the avenue. Baretto-Londra is the bar, a dark room with a Union Jack theme that nods to London and to the Baretto in the São Paulo hotel; it is one of the few hotel bars in Rio that fills with residents late in the evening. The rooftop pool bar serves lunch and drinks through the afternoon.

Wellness

Spa Fasano offers massages and facial treatments in a small suite of rooms, and there is a gym with cardio and weight equipment. The rooftop pool is the hotel's main amenity in this respect, with a sauna adjoining it.

Weddings and events

The hotel is built for private dinners and small celebrations rather than large conferences. Fasano al Mare and the Baretto-Londra can be reserved for private events, and the rooftop is used for receptions and launches. Couples marrying in Rio often take the hotel as a base and hold the ceremony elsewhere, in a church in Ipanema or a venue in Santa Teresa, before dinner at the hotel.

Location

Ipanema is the city's most comfortable beach district, and the hotel sits on its oceanfront avenue. Arpoador, the rock from which Cariocas applaud the sunset, is a short walk east; Copacabana begins beyond it. The Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas is a few blocks inland, and the shops and restaurants of Rua Garcia d'Ávila and Rua Dias Ferreira are close by. Santos Dumont Airport, for domestic flights, is about twenty-five minutes by car; Galeão International Airport is forty minutes to an hour depending on traffic. General Osório metro station, in Ipanema, is the nearest on the network.