Hotel Excelsior

Hotel description

Independent, family-owned, intimate, with the kind of gorgeous traditional interiors the big luxury chains would kill for — that’s the Hotel Excelsior in a nutshell. You can find anything you want in Munich, from grand hotels to design experiments, but this sort of thing is, and probably always will be, quite rare.

It’s largely a replica, as the building fell on difficult times during the last war, and the décor certainly isn’t authentically 19th-century vintage. But the style is faithfully recreated, and the relative newness of the materials only adds to the sparkle of the building’s old facade and the lush fabrics and woodwork of the guest rooms. After all, they didn’t have soundproofing like this a century ago, and nor did they have satellite TV. And more than the gadgetry, what matters is the personality — it’s hardly kitschily, stereotypically Bavarian, but there’s clearly some history here.

There’s a restaurant on site, the Vinothek, as well as a cocktail bar with a fine selection of Bavarian beers. And, as luck would have it, the Excelsior’s owners happen to be restaurateurs — they’re only too happy to direct you to their other offerings, the Michelin-starred Königshof and the more casual Anna.