The Peninsula Shanghai

No. 32 The Bund is the last address at the northern end of the waterfront, where the Huangpu meets Suzhou Creek and the old British Consulate stands in its garden. On the consulate's grounds The Peninsula Shanghai opened on 18 October 2009, the first new building on the Bund since the 1940s and the first hotel the Kadoorie family had built in the city where their fortune began.

History

The Kadoories owned the Majestic and the Palace hotels in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s, and Sir Elly Kadoorie's Marble Hall on Bubbling Well Road was the grandest house in the city, before the family's business moved to Hong Kong after 1949. The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, their company, returned to Shanghai with a 50-year lease on part of the British Consulate compound, where the consulate had stood since 1873. The hotel took six years to design and build and opened in October 2009, in time for the Expo of 2010. Its two restaurants, Sir Elly's and Yi Long Court, gained Michelin stars when the guide reached Shanghai in 2016, and the Rolls-Royce Phantoms at the door, with a 1934 Phantom II among them, continued the Peninsula habit.

Architecture and design

The building was designed to sit among the stone banks and trading houses of the Bund without copying them: a 14-storey block in grey stone with Art Deco lines, set-back upper floors and a lantern at the top, facing the river across the Bund promenade. Pierre-Yves Rochon designed the interiors in the manner of 1920s Shanghai, with a lobby of marble, bronze and a coffered ceiling, lacquer, silk and jade green in the rooms. The hotel's garden adjoins the consulate's lawn, and the Peninsula Arcade of shops runs along the ground floor on the Suzhou Creek side.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has 235 rooms and suites, the largest of them facing the river and Pudong. Rooms are among the biggest on the Bund, with dressing rooms, marble bathrooms with a television in the bath wall, and the Peninsula's own valet box, nail dryer and weather display. The suites include the Peninsula Suite on the top floor with a terrace, and a group of garden suites on the consulate side.

Dining

Yi Long Court is the Cantonese restaurant, with a Michelin star and private rooms in the manner of a Shanghai mansion of the 1930s. Sir Elly's, named after the family patriarch, is the French restaurant on the 13th floor with a terrace on the floor above, Sir Elly's Terrace, which has the widest view of Pudong of any bar on the Bund. The Lobby serves afternoon tea with a string quartet, as in Hong Kong, and the Compass Bar is the panelled bar on the ground floor.

Wellness

The Peninsula Spa by ESPA occupies the upper floors with treatment rooms, a sauna, a steam room and a 25-metre indoor pool under a glass roof, with a terrace for the summer. The fitness centre faces the river. A Peninsula Academy programme arranges private visits around the city.

Weddings and events

The hotel has a ballroom with its own entrance and foyer, used for weddings and banquets, and a set of meeting rooms on the same floor. Weddings are the main business of the ballroom, with the Yi Long Court private rooms taking the banquet dinners of smaller parties and the rooftop terrace the receptions. Capacities depend on the layout chosen.

Location

The hotel stands at the northern end of the Bund in Huangpu district, next to Huangpu Park and the Waibaidu Bridge over Suzhou Creek, with the Rockbund quarter of restored 1920s buildings behind it. Nanjing East Road metro station, on Lines 2 and 10, is a ten-minute walk, and the ferry and tunnels to Pudong are close by. Pudong International Airport is about 45 minutes by car and Hongqiao around 40. For a luxury hotel in Shanghai the position is the one every other house on the Bund would take if it could: the river in front, the consulate garden at the side and the oldest view in the city from every window on the east.