The restored 1928 Bauhaus-era department store on Torstrasse — 76 rooms across seven floors, the rooftop pool over Mitte, Cecconi's Italian on the ground floor, and members-club access for hotel guests during their stay.
"The most charged hotel building in Berlin — Joseph Goebbels' looted 1929 Jüdisches Kaufhaus, then East German Politburo head office, now Soho House's strongest European house, with a rooftop pool over Mitte that captures more about the contemporary Berlin paradox than any other roof in the city."
The Soho House Berlin building has the most charged twentieth-century history of any hotel in the city. It was completed in 1929 to a design by the architect Georg Bauer for the Jewish merchant family Jonas, who operated it as the Jonass & Co. department store on the Torstrasse–Prenzlauer Allee corner — a strikingly modern brick-and-steel building of the late-Bauhaus period, with the eight-storey vertical glazing strips and reinforced-concrete frame that mark the moment. The Jonas family was forcibly expropriated by the Nazi regime in 1935; Joseph Goebbels' propaganda ministry annexed the building, and from 1939 it housed the Reichsjugendführung — the headquarters of the Hitler Youth. After 1945 the East German communist party (the SED) took the building as one of its principal Berlin head offices, where it remained until the fall of the wall.
Soho House — the British members-club operator founded by Nick Jones — acquired the building in the early 2000s and undertook a five-year restoration before opening Soho House Berlin in May 2010. The restoration retained the original brick exterior, the period steel-framed windows, the original mosaic flooring on the ground floor, and a substantial portion of the interior steelwork; new interiors layered Berlin and East-bloc design references over the historic envelope. The building has 76 hotel rooms across the upper floors, the members-club spaces on multiple levels (a working club for Soho House members), Cecconi's Italian restaurant on the ground floor (open to the public for breakfast and lunch), the Allegra restaurant in the original elevator hall, and the rooftop with its 14-metre lap pool, gym, and spa.
Hotel guests receive Soho House membership for the duration of their stay — meaning full access to the club levels (the Drawing Room, the Library, the upstairs bar, the rooftop) which are otherwise reserved for members of the global Soho House network. This is the central proposition: the room is one element, the access to the club is the other half of the value, and for a category of traveller the second half is decisive. The 76 rooms range from the Tiny size (genuinely small but well-detailed) through to Big and to a small number of named suites; the Soho Suite is the headline unit with terrace access. Rooms throughout are dressed in Cole & Son wallpaper, vintage German modernist furniture, and the deep-rooted Soho House look that has become its own design dialect.
Service is club-style rather than grand-hotel — the team is younger, less formal, faster on dinner reservations across the design-forward Berlin restaurant scene (Tim Raue, Nobelhart & Schmutzig, Mrs Robinson, Lode & Stijn, Cookies Cream) than at any traditional five-star in the city. The position on the Mitte–Prenzlauer Berg border puts every distinctive contemporary Berlin neighbourhood within a fifteen-minute walk: Hackescher Markt (eight minutes), Rosenthaler Platz (three minutes), Auguststrasse galleries (eight minutes), the Volksbühne (five minutes), Mauerpark (twelve minutes). For the design-and-culture-led Berlin trip, Soho House is the answer.
For Berlin anniversaries with a strong design-and-culture pull, Soho House is the more distinctive choice over the formal Mitte grand hotels. The Big or Soho rooms are the central booking; the rooftop pool at sunset, Cecconi's for lunch, the club levels in the evening, and the easy access to Mrs Robinson, Tim Raue, and the Auguststrasse gallery walk make this a Berlin anniversary calibrated for the design-set couple specifically. The Adlon and the de Rome are stronger if formality is the brief; Soho House is stronger if Berlin's contemporary creative scene is.
For Berlin solo retreats Soho House delivers the strongest combination of any hotel in the city: the rooftop pool and gym for the workout part of the brief, the club levels for a productive working environment with low-friction social structure, the location on the Mitte–Prenzlauer Berg border for the longest set of walking routes, and the membership access for the two weeks after the stay if it overlaps with another Soho House visit. A Tiny or Small room with a long stay works particularly well.
For Berlin bachelor/ette weekends Soho House is the natural anchor. Multiple Big rooms across one floor, the rooftop pool as the daytime venue, Cecconi's as the dinner option, and direct walking access to the Berlin nightlife belt — Berghain, Kater Blau, Sisyphos, Watergate — that the Mitte grand hotels are physically further from. The members-club element gives the group a private home base between venues. This is the best Berlin bachelor/ette hotel by some distance.
Torstrasse 1
10119 Berlin
Germany
Rosenthaler Platz U-Bahn 3 minutes; Hackescher Markt S-Bahn 8 minutes; Brandenburg Gate 12 minutes by taxi; Volksbühne 5 minutes on foot; Auguststrasse galleries 8 minutes; BER airport 40 minutes
76 rooms
Tiny Rooms from EUR 400/night
Small Rooms from EUR 470/night
Medium Rooms from EUR 540/night
Big Rooms from EUR 650/night
Soho Suite from EUR 1,400/night
Check-in: 3:00 PM
Check-out: 12:00 PM
Building completed 1929; Soho House Berlin opened May 2010; operated by Soho House & Co.
Cecconi's Italian restaurant
Allegra dining room
Rooftop pool with Mitte views
Cowshed Spa
Members-club access during stay
The Drawing Room and Library club levels
Cinema (members)
From EUR 400/night. Big rooms and the Soho Suite book three to four months ahead for spring and autumn weekends; six months for Berlinale (mid-February), Gallery Weekend (late April), and Berlin Art Week (mid-September).
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