Palace Hotel Tokyo

The view from the upper floors of Palace Hotel Tokyo is of water, stone and pine: the outer moat of the Imperial Palace, the walls of the Wadakura gate and the fountains of Wadakura Fountain Park directly below. The hotel stands on that spot in Marunouchi, one of the few addresses in the Japanese capital that look straight onto the palace grounds, and a hotel has occupied it since the years just after the war.

History

The first hotel on the site, the Hotel Teito, opened in 1947. The Palace Hotel replaced it in 1961, and for half a century it was where Tokyo's business families held weddings, ministries entertained and visiting executives stayed within reach of the Marunouchi head offices. Across the road, Wadakura Fountain Park was laid out to mark the 1959 marriage of Crown Prince Akihito, and it was rebuilt in the 1990s after the marriage of Crown Prince Naruhito.

By the 2000s the 1961 building had aged. Palace Hotel Co., Ltd., the Japanese company that owns and runs the hotel, closed it in 2009 and rebuilt it from the ground up, and the new Palace Hotel Tokyo opened in May 2012. The brands that arrived in the city in the same years were mostly foreign chains on the top floors of office towers. This house went the other way: a Japanese-owned, independent luxury hotel in Tokyo, in a building of its own, beside the palace.

Architecture and design

The new building is broad and relatively low for Marunouchi, and its long horizontal lines answer the stone walls of the moat. Many rooms have balconies, an uncommon feature in central Tokyo, where most hotel windows are sealed. The interiors use pale wood, stone and Japanese crafts, and the public floors carry a collection of contemporary art, much of it by Japanese artists.

Rooms and suites

Rooms face either the palace gardens or the towers of Marunouchi and Otemachi. The palace side is the one to ask for. In early spring the banks of the moat turn pink with cherry blossom, and on clear winter days the dark woods of the palace grounds stretch away beneath a wide sky. On a balcony above the moat, the sound of the city drops away more than seems possible a few hundred metres from Tokyo Station.

Dining

Esterre, run with Alain Ducasse since 2018, is the French restaurant, on an upper floor overlooking the gardens. Wadakura serves Japanese cooking, and two well-known Tokyo names run counters inside the hotel: Sushi Kanesaka and Tempura Yamanoue. Amber is the Chinese restaurant. Grand Kitchen, with a terrace by the moat, serves through the day, and The Palace Lounge occupies the lobby. The Royal Bar carries over the name of the bar from the old hotel, and its wood-panelled room is the clearest link between the new building and the old.

Wellness

Evian Spa Tokyo, the first spa of the French water brand in Asia, has its own floor with treatment rooms. The hotel also has an indoor pool and a fitness centre. Outside, the path around the palace moat is one of the city's favourite running routes, a loop of about five kilometres without traffic lights.

Weddings and events

Weddings have been part of the house since 1961. The hotel has a ballroom, a range of banquet rooms and private rooms for smaller receptions, along with a chapel and a Shinto shrine, so a couple can hold a Shinto ceremony and a reception under one roof. Meeting rooms serve the corporate headquarters of Marunouchi and Otemachi, many of them within walking distance.

Location

Otemachi Station, where five subway lines meet, connects to the hotel by underground passage. Tokyo Station, with the Shinkansen and the Narita Express, is about ten minutes on foot. Haneda Airport is around half an hour by car, and Narita about an hour or more. The Imperial Palace East Gardens, open to the public on most days, lie across the moat to the north.