Rosewood Munich

Kardinal-Faulhaber-Strasse is a short street between the Frauenkirche and the Residenz, lined with the stone palaces of Munich's old banking quarter. Two of them, the former headquarters of the Bavarian State Bank and the Palais Neuhaus-Preysing next door, opened in October 2023 as Rosewood Munich, the group's first hotel in Germany.

History

The Palais Neuhaus-Preysing is the older of the two buildings, a townhouse of 1737 built for a court official in the late baroque style, with a stuccoed facade and a stair hall that survived the war. The bank building beside it was put up at the end of the nineteenth century for the Bayerische Staatsbank, the state's own bank, and later served as a branch headquarters for its successor, HypoVereinsbank. Both are listed. The hotel project took the better part of a decade from announcement to opening, with the structural work of joining two buildings of different centuries, and Rosewood Munich opened on 10 October 2023.

Architecture and design

The designer Tara Bernerd & Partners of London took the two buildings as they were and let the difference show. The bank gives the hotel its main entrance, its high banking hall and its long corridors; the palais gives it the baroque stair, the salons with their original stucco and the quieter rooms on the upper floors. Materials are stone, oak and brass in the bank, with painted panelling and pale plaster in the palais. The old banking hall, with its glass roof, became the heart of the ground floor.

Rooms and suites

There are 132 keys: 73 rooms and 59 suites, an unusually high share of suites for a city hotel. Rooms in the bank building have high ceilings and tall windows onto the street; those in the palais are more intimate, with period plasterwork. The largest suites occupy the piano nobile of the palais and the corner positions of the bank, with dining rooms and views to the twin towers of the Frauenkirche.

Dining

Brasserie Cuvilliés, named after the eighteenth-century court architect François de Cuvilliés, is the all-day restaurant, serving Bavarian and French dishes under the glass roof of the former banking hall. Montez, the bar, takes its name from Lola Montez, the dancer whose affair with King Ludwig I helped end his reign in 1848; it serves cocktails in a room of dark wood and velvet. The Wintergarten, a glazed lounge, is used for breakfast, afternoon coffee and cake.

Wellness

Asaya, Rosewood's spa brand, occupies the lower floors with treatment rooms, a sauna and steam area, a gym and an indoor swimming pool, a rarity in a hotel of the old city.

Weddings and events

The event rooms are the baroque salons of the Palais Neuhaus-Preysing on the first floor, used for wedding dinners and receptions of modest size, and a ballroom in the bank building for larger weddings and conferences. Meeting rooms with daylight are in the bank's former offices. The palais stair hall serves for arrivals and photographs.

Location

The hotel stands in the Altstadt, within the old city walls. The Frauenkirche is two minutes away on foot, Marienplatz five, the Residenz and the National Theatre five, and the shops of Maximilianstrasse ten. Marienplatz station, with S-Bahn and U-Bahn lines, is the nearest; the S-Bahn from Munich Airport takes about 40 minutes to Marienplatz, and a taxi around 35 minutes. Among luxury hotels in Munich it is the one most tightly woven into the old city, with the Bayerischer Hof and the Mandarin Oriental as its nearest neighbours.