Capella Hanoi

The Hotel

Capella Hanoi opened on 1 February 2022 as the Singapore-based Capella Hotel Group's third Vietnamese property after Capella Phuket-pre-opening and after the Capella Ubud — and was the long-awaited Bill Bensley-designed boutique that had been in development at the 11 Le Phung Hieu Street site since 2017. Bensley — the American-born landscape and interior architect based in Bangkok, who had previously designed the Four Seasons Tented Camp in Chiang Rai, the Capella Ubud, the Shinta Mani Wild in Cambodia and the Rosewood Luang Prabang — took the commission as a deliberately theatrical project rooted in the Belle-Époque period of Hanoi's Opera House (1911), with the architectural conceit being that the entire building reads as the backstage and dressing rooms of a working opera house, with each guest room imagined as the personal pied-à-terre of a different fictional opera-singer character, complete with that character's biography, wardrobe, and decorative theme. The result is the most maximalist and theatrically-decorated hotel in central Hanoi by an unambiguous margin.

The 47 rooms — including 8 named suites — divide between four primary categories. Standard "Performer" rooms at 32 square metres include the imagined character backstory, character wardrobe and themed decoration (the Lily of Saigon Performer Room, the Madame Butterfly Performer Room). Premier and Diva categories at 50 to 70 square metres add a sitting area and a deeper character treatment. The Capella Suite at 130 square metres — the imagined "prima donna" suite — includes a free-standing copper bath in the middle of the bedroom, a private dressing room with full-wall mirrors, and a private balcony overlooking the Opera House. Bathrooms are travertine, brass and copper; bath products are Bensley's signature Capella programme.

Backstage is the all-day restaurant — opened with the hotel as the property's principal dining room, with a contemporary Vietnamese-French register and a deliberately theatrical service decoration (the wait staff in costume; the kitchen visible behind a stage-curtain framed window). Hudson Rooms is the basement speakeasy programme — accessed by a hidden side entrance, with a Roaring-1920s decorative scheme, an extensive Bensley-curated cocktail and Vietnamese-rice-spirit programme, and live jazz programming Wednesday through Saturday. The Diva Bar handles the lobby cocktail register. The Auriga Spa runs five treatment rooms; the indoor heated pool sits in the basement. The 24-hour fitness centre is on the lower-ground level.

The Le Phung Hieu Street position is the booking trade-off relative to the Metropole's Ngo Quyen address. The two hotels are 90 seconds apart on foot — both directly behind the Hanoi Opera House. From Capella's lobby it is 60 seconds to the Opera House, three minutes to Hoan Kiem Lake, four minutes to the Old Quarter, and twelve minutes by car to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. The Capella offer reads as the design-and-Bensley alternative to the Metropole's heritage; for travellers wanting the most-photographed contemporary boutique in Vietnam — particularly for proposals, anniversaries and design-conscious honeymooners — Capella is unambiguous.

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