Villa Copenhagen

The Hotel

Villa Copenhagen opened in June 2020 inside the listed 1909 Central Post Building (Centralpostbygningen) on Tietgensgade — a 25,000-square-metre government-Beaux-Arts pile designed by Heinrich Wenck (the same architect who built Copenhagen Central Station next door) and built as the Royal Danish Postal Service headquarters when the Post still ran one quarter of all Danish telegram, postal, and parcel traffic. The building handled mail until 2017; the hotel conversion took three years and is the largest historic-building hotel project in Scandinavian history. The exterior — listed limestone with copper-clad detail and a 65-metre clock tower — is preserved intact; the interior was reorganised around two new internal courtyards, with the original ceremonial post hall converted to the lobby and the postal sorting halls converted to event venues.

The 390 rooms (including 27 suites) are arranged across the building's seven floors and span a wider category set than any other Copenhagen luxury property — Cosy Doubles at 22 square metres, Premium Doubles at 28, Junior Suites at 40, Deluxe Suites at 55, the named suites (the Royal Suite, the Marble Suite, the Postmaster Suite) at 90 to 130 square metres in the corner positions overlooking Tivoli or the Central Station forecourt. Interior design is by Universal Design Studio (London) — the lead-architects on much of Ace Hotels' international portfolio — and is restrained: pale oak floors, off-white plaster walls, dusty-rose and forest-green accents, brass fittings, the occasional preserved fragment of original 1909 mosaic floor or panelling. Bathrooms are larger than the Copenhagen norm and use Maison Louis Marie products; the better category rooms have rain showers and free-standing tubs.

The dining is the property's second proposition. Common Kitchen is the all-day brasserie in the postal sorting hall — open kitchen, wood-fired oven, a vegetable-forward Nordic-Mediterranean menu by chef Henrik Norström. Kontrast is the wine bar in the former bicycle storage. Earth is the cocktail and lounge bar in the lobby. The Tea Salon (a Sri Lankan partnership with Dilmah) is the afternoon-tea venue. The hotel's Common Kitchen runs a near-zero-waste kitchen — composting, in-house fermentation, herbs from the rooftop garden — and has been the most decorated sustainable-kitchen project in Scandinavian hospitality since opening. The 25-metre heated outdoor courtyard pool sits in the central courtyard, heated year-round by the building's surplus heating capacity (a circular-economy detail much-photographed in design press).

The position is decisive: directly opposite the south side of Tivoli Gardens (a 90-second walk to the gate), beside Copenhagen Central Station (90-second walk to the platform), and at the boundary of Vesterbro (the city's most interesting eating-and-drinking district). The hotel is part of the Beyond Green alliance — the highest-tier sustainable luxury hospitality framework — and operates the city's most rigorous social-impact programme (a portion of every booking funds children's-rights organisation Save the Children, with whom the hotel has a structural partnership through founder-investor Daniel Bigum). For Copenhagen at the upper price point this is the most contemporary five-star — fresher than the heritage hotels, larger than the boutique alternatives, and the only address with a heated pool, a 25,000-square-metre listed building, and a Tivoli view.

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