Palacio Duhau - Park Hyatt Buenos Aires

Avenida Alvear runs for seven blocks through Recoleta, the Buenos Aires quarter where the city's landowning families built in the French manner between 1880 and 1930. Number 1661 is the Palacio Duhau, finished in 1934 for the Duhau family to designs by the French architect Léon Dourge, and since 2006 the heart of Palacio Duhau - Park Hyatt Buenos Aires.

History

Luis Duhau, a landowner who served as minister of agriculture in the 1930s, commissioned the house at a time when most of the avenue's palaces had already been standing for a generation. Dourge, who had settled in Argentina and worked for several of the great estancia families, gave him a neoclassical mansion with a stone facade, a carriage entrance on the avenue and a garden falling away behind towards Posadas, the street below. The family kept the house for seven decades.

Hyatt took it on in the early 2000s. Rather than carve the palace into a hotel on its own, the project added a new building on Posadas, on the lower side of the garden, and tied the two together with a terraced garden above ground and a gallery below. The hotel opened in 2006.

Architecture and design

The palace holds the hotel's most formal spaces: the Piano Nobile salons with their original plasterwork, boiseries and marble, and the Oak Bar, lined with carved oak panelling of the 17th century brought from a chateau in Normandy and installed by the Duhau family. The tower on Posadas is contemporary, with a stone and glass face, and most of the bedrooms are there. Between the two lies the garden, stepped on several levels with lawns, old trees and a terrace for lunch. The Paseo de las Artes, the underground gallery joining the buildings, is used for rotating exhibitions of Argentine artists.

Rooms and suites

The palace has a small number of rooms and suites, the grandest of them on the avenue side with high ceilings and the original joinery. The Posadas building has the larger share, with a cleaner line, pale wood, marble bathrooms and windows over the garden or the city. The split lets a guest choose between the two characters of the house.

Dining

Gioia, in the Posadas building, serves Italian cooking with a terrace over the garden. Duhau Restaurante & Vinoteca, in the palace, is the formal room, built around Argentine beef and the country's wines; its cheese room ages and serves Argentine cheeses, which is rare in the city. Tea is taken in the Piano Nobile salons in the afternoon, and the Oak Bar keeps a long list of whiskies and a cigar selection. The cellar leans on Mendoza, Salta and Patagonia.

Wellness

Ahín Wellness & Spa occupies a floor of the Posadas building, with an indoor pool, treatment rooms, a fitness centre, sauna and steam. The name comes from a Mapuche word for well-being.

Weddings and events

The palace salons, the garden and the gallery give the hotel a set of spaces that few Buenos Aires hotels can match for a wedding: ceremonies in the garden, dinner in the Piano Nobile, dancing below. Meetings and corporate dinners use the function rooms in the Posadas building. Capacities depend on the layout chosen.

Location

Recoleta is the quarter of the Recoleta Cemetery, where Eva Perón is buried, and of the Alvear Palace Hotel, two blocks up the avenue. The cemetery and the Basilica del Pilar are five minutes on foot; the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and the Floralis Genérica about fifteen. Avenida 9 de Julio and the Teatro Colón are a ten-minute taxi ride. Jorge Newbery airport, for domestic flights, is about 15 minutes by road; Ezeiza, for international arrivals, about 45 minutes to an hour. For a luxury hotel in Buenos Aires, the location is as central as Recoleta allows while keeping the avenue's quiet.