PRICE:
Frommer's Highly Recommended

This is a good example of the wave of new, design-conscious hotels that opened in Vienna during 2006. It sits behind a rectilinear, five-story facade of distressed concrete which, in 1908, was chiseled into a Bauhaus-inspired design that, at least for the era, was a radical departure from the neo-Gothic facade of the Rathaus (City Hall) and the cool, elegant Greek Revival style of the Austrian Parliament, both of which lie nearby, across the boulevard. It originated as a sanatorium and later evolved into a student dormitory. After a radical reconfiguration, the hotel gives the impression that every interior angle and every interior line was meticulously plotted into a postmodern, avant-garde design that includes lots of white Turkish travertine and marble, dark-grained wood, and a (sometimes excessive) use of the photos of Austrian photographer Curt Themessl and the artfully free-form glass vases and sculptures of Romanian glass-blower Ioan Nemtoi. Most of the rooms face a quiet but dull inner courtyard, and each is comfortable, decoratively neutral, and postmodern. The on-site restaurant and wine bar is stylish and ultra-modern, with more of Nemtoi's glass sculptures and row after row of illuminated shelves holding artfully displayed bottles of wine and liquor. There's only a small plaque identifying this building as a hotel.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Vienna and Danube Valley, 7th Edition, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Find Hotel Deals on Yahoo Travel»