Boston, USA · Four-Star · ★★★★
The Colonnade Hotel Boston
Boston's only rooftop pool. Brasserie JO downstairs, the Back Bay skyline at the deck.
Boston's only rooftop pool. Brasserie JO downstairs, the Back Bay skyline at the deck.
"Boston's only rooftop pool — Brasserie JO downstairs, the Back Bay skyline at the deck."
The Colonnade is a 285-room independent boutique hotel that lives or dies by a single, indisputable fact: it has the only rooftop pool in Boston. Open seasonally from late May through early September, the RTP Rooftop Pool is the property's year-defining feature — a heated freshwater pool, cabanas, daybeds, full bar service, and an open deck that frames the Back Bay skyline from a height most Boston hotels cannot match. For roughly fourteen weeks a year, this is the most coveted poolside address in the city. For the rest of the year, the property is a competent four-star with strong food and a quietly excellent location.
Architecturally, The Colonnade is a 1971 Brutalist building — a confident slab of poured concrete that has aged into something more interesting than fashionable. The interiors were thoroughly modernised in the most recent renovation, with rooms now finished in muted neutrals, walnut accents, and large-format windows that take in either the Back Bay rooftops or the Christian Science Plaza reflecting pool across Huntington Avenue. The building's structural honesty has become an asset. It does not pretend to be a Beaux-Arts townhouse. It does not need to.
Brasserie JO Boston, on the ground floor, is the second reason guests stay here. The room is a French brasserie in the proper Lyonnaise tradition — banquettes, brass rails, a long zinc bar, the requisite Alsatian onion tart on the menu. It serves all day, which makes it useful for the kind of business breakfast that needs gravitas, the kind of late lunch that runs long, and the kind of post-pool dinner where everyone is half-sunburned and very thirsty. Steak frites and choucroute garnie are exactly as competent as you would hope.
The Colonnade is the bachelorette weekend pick for Boston the moment temperatures cross seventy degrees. The choreography is identical every weekend: rooftop pool by noon, cabana, prosecco service, group photos against the skyline, descent to Brasserie JO for dinner, then a short walk to the Back Bay bar circuit. The hotel handles this volume without complaint — they have built the operation around it. Group rates are generous on summer weekends, suite blocks are easy to arrange, and the front desk does not blink at fourteen women checking in at once.
Position-wise, The Colonnade sits exactly on the seam between Back Bay and South End — Symphony Hall and the Christian Science Plaza on one side, the Prudential Center and Copley Square three blocks east, the South End brownstone restaurants ten minutes south. Hynes Convention Center and the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center are both walkable for business travellers, which is why the property repositions itself in winter as a quiet, reliable corporate option. The summer crowd is loud. The off-season crowd is in town for a reason. Both work.
If your bachelorette is in Boston and the calendar lands between late May and early September, The Colonnade is the answer and there is no second-place finish. The rooftop pool is the only one in the city, the cabanas book up six weeks in advance, and the front desk has handled enough sashes and matching swimsuits to lose any sense of surprise. Pre-book a cabana, block a row of suites, and brief the concierge on dinner numbers — they will get you into Brasserie JO downstairs without drama.
For an anniversary that wants atmosphere without ceremony, The Colonnade in summer offers the rare combination of a rooftop pool, a properly run French brasserie, and rooms quiet enough to remember why you came. Request a high-floor room facing the Back Bay rooftops, dinner at Brasserie JO at the bar rather than a table, and a late breakfast on the pool deck. Off-season anniversaries are better served elsewhere in this list.
Off-season, The Colonnade is a strong business pick. Hynes Convention Center is a five-minute walk, the Prudential Center and Copley business district are immediately east, and the property has the kind of competent, efficient corporate operation that does not get in your way. Brasserie JO handles client breakfasts and dinners with no awkwardness. Rooms are quiet, WiFi is reliable, and corporate rates between October and April are unusually good for a Back Bay address.
Rates checked May 2026. Price may vary by date.
The Colonnade has the only rooftop pool in the city. Book the cabana early, block the suites, and let the deck do the rest.
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