Hamilton Princess & Beach Club

Pink stucco on Pitts Bay Road has greeted ships entering Hamilton Harbour since 1885, when the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club opened as the Princess Hotel. The name honours Princess Louise, fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, whose winter in Bermuda in 1883 brought the island to the attention of wealthy New Yorkers and convinced local backers that the capital needed a hotel of scale. The house that followed has been enlarged, rebuilt and repainted many times, but the colour has never changed.

History

The hotel's strangest chapter came during the Second World War, when the British government took over the building for Imperial Censorship. Hundreds of censors, many of them women, worked in the bedrooms reading transatlantic mail that passed through Bermuda by flying boat, looking for German intelligence hidden in letters and microdots. After the war the hotel returned to its winter trade, later joining the Princess Hotels group and then Fairmont. In 2012 the Bermudian brothers Alexander and Peter Green bought it and began a renovation that ran for several years, adding a marina, new restaurants and a contemporary art collection drawn from the family's holdings, with works by Banksy, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst and Yayoi Kusama hung in corridors and public rooms. When the 35th America's Cup came to Bermuda in 2017, the hotel served as a base for teams and visiting yachts.

Architecture and design

The building is a long composition of wings along the harbour rather than a single monument, its pink walls set against the white stepped roofs Bermuda uses to catch rainwater. The 2010s renovation gave the lobby and bars a cleaner, more contemporary look, and the art became the decorative programme: guests pass gallery-quality pieces on the way to breakfast. An infinity pool sits on the harbour side, looking across the water to Paget parish.

Rooms and suites

Rooms are spread between the original harbour-facing wings and later additions, and the best of them look straight down Hamilton Harbour towards the Great Sound. A Fairmont Gold floor operates as a hotel within the hotel, with its own lounge, breakfast and concierge. For a luxury hotel in Hamilton, the mix of harbour, garden and pool views is unusually wide, and the Green family's pieces continue into the suites.

Dining

Marcus', opened in 2015, is the restaurant of the Ethiopian-born Swedish chef Marcus Samuelsson, serving Bermudian fish and his own take on Caribbean and American cooking on a terrace over the water. 1609 Bar & Restaurant stands on the marina and takes its name from the year the Sea Venture was wrecked on Bermuda's reefs, the event that led to the island's settlement. Crown & Anchor, off the lobby, covers breakfast through dinner.

Wellness

Exhale runs the spa, with treatment rooms, a fitness centre and a programme of yoga and barre classes. There are two pools, one of them the infinity pool above the harbour. The Beach Club at Sinky Bay on the South Shore, reached by hotel shuttle in about twenty minutes, gives this harbour hotel a private beach of pink sand with its own pool and restaurant.

Weddings and events

Weddings are held in the harbourside gardens, in the ballrooms of the main building and on the sand at the Beach Club, which hosts ceremonies facing the South Shore at sunset. Conference groups use the ballrooms and boardrooms of the main building, and the marina allows arrivals by boat.

Location

The hotel stands at the western edge of Hamilton in Pembroke parish, a ten-minute walk along Pitts Bay Road from the shops of Front Street and the ferry terminal. L.F. Wade International Airport is about 30 minutes by taxi at the eastern end of the island. Visitors cannot hire cars in Bermuda, so guests move by taxi, ferry, bus, scooter or electric minicar.