Anthea Gerrie Enjoys The Best View In Town In At The Spectacular Radisson Collection Berlin.
The Radisson Collection Berlin, perched within a large but discreet box of a building giving no hint of the spectacle within, turns out to be the hotel you never want to leave. That’s thanks to some eye-poppingly creative design and a high comfort quotient on the inside, and while Alexanderplatz, the square the hotel fronts, is emblematic of the grim old east of a once-divided city, from every other aspect you couldn’t have a better city location.
The right side of the hotel is perched on the Spree, focus of social life in the warmer months when locals turn their city into a beach with riverside bars and clubs; the Radisson Collection plays its part with a full-width terrace housing a bar overlooking the riverbank and restaurant dispensing Mediterranean flavours. Turn left out of the front exit and left again and within five minutes you’re at Hackescher Markt, a cafe-fronted market whose eponymous Hofe, beautiful old apartment buildings housing shops, restaurants and bars in their lively connecting courtyards are just across the road.
But you’ll find plenty to gawp at before you even leave the hotel, as we did while waiting for our room as early arrivals. An exceptionally large and comfortable circular lobby with a soaring atrium seemed designed to detain us, a destination in its own right with its expansive art library and a cafe-bar serving excellent coffee and strudel as well as perfect pints of golden pilsner.
The former AquaDom, a notorious cylindrical aquarium whose collapse prompted a complete hotel redesign in 2022, has been replaced with a vertical indoor garden. The glass-fronted lifts offering views of the atrium as they soar up and down are pretty spectacular too. Yet both were eclipsed by the view from our spacious room overlooking the river and the huge and impressive dome of the Berlin Cathedral on the opposite bank.
The redesign, creating 427 elegant rooms and suites across six floors approached via spacious curved landings, plays up the views by toning down the decor – those who don’t get the Cathedral and Humboldt Forum in their sightline may instead get the City Hall and legendary TV tower which is perhaps the most iconic symbol of 20th century Berlin to gaze upon. We enjoyed the mid-century lines of our plum wing chair, our ocean of white bedding, a spacious white marble bathroom with both rainfall shower and tub and particularly our balcony with table and chairs perfect for taking in that rare view while enjoying in an-room Nespresso.
Breakfast was exceptionally bountiful, thanks to a buffet offering a huge choice of meats, cheeses and salads as well as egg dishes cooked to order. And given that the Berlin-as-beach vibe is a delightful perk of the hotel’s location for those who come in summer, the Greek food at San Ena offered an unexpected dive into tender, properly-braised octopus, particularly good hummus and other dishes which suited the sweltering summer temperatures.
Both high and low culture are within steps of the hotel, the former represented by the Humboldt Forum, with its spectacular ground-floor antiquities, and beyond it the grand old institutions of Museum Island, the latter by the excellent DDR Museum which is right on the hotel’s doorstep, engagingly telling the story of the bad old days of East Berlin with its unreliable Trabants, smuggled-in jeans once proscribed as politically incorrect and delightfully recreated living areas evoking the seventies and eighties whose decor looks pretty cool to modern eyes, even if there was never enough of exactly what you wanted to eat.
The privations of the East can now be laughed at in a reunified city where the once walled-off section provides the cultural capital, with an easy journey by U-Bahn to the leafier, hedonistic and more prosperous-looking West. You’ll enjoy its smart department stores, upmarket cafes, park and zoo by day, but look forward to returning to Mitte, the huge main section of the eastern half of Berlin, by night. If you can ever get yourself out of the lobby and on to the city’s many restaurants and legendary bars and clubs, that is.
Tell Me More About Staying At The Radisson Collection Berlin
Radisson Collection Berlin, Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 3, Berlin, 10178 Germany
T: +49 30 238280
Rooms from about £120
