Lisbon, Portugal

Hotel Hotel

Price per night from$228.03

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR209.81), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Arty Avenida abode

Setting

Lively Liberdade

So good they felt moved, nay compelled, to name it twice, Hotel Hotel sits bang in the centre of town, a hop and a skip from Avenida da Liberdade’s cornucopia of consumerism and café culture. This is a hotel (hotel) that wears its art on its sleeve. And we mean that quite literally: unique artworks fill nearly every nook and cranny and the basement tattoo studio can provide you with a permanent souvenir of your stay, should you so desire. The much-lauded restaurant serves up fresh sushi and imaginative Portuguese dishes, and the tranquil courtyard pays homage to the nearby botanical gardens, its frenzy of foliage surrounding an invitingly inky-black swimming pool.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A pastel de nata each on arrival

Facilities

Photos Hotel Hotel facilities

Need to know

Rooms

40, of which four are suites.

Check–Out

12 noon. Check-in is at 3pm. Both are flexible when availability permits and guests arriving early (or departing late) are welcome to make use of the hotel facilities.

Prices

Double rooms from £190.05 (€222), including tax at 6 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €2.00 per person per night on check-out.

More details

Rates include buffet and à la carte breakfast served in the restaurant or courtyard garden.

Also

There’s manna for both body and mind on Hotel Hotel’s subterranean level, where the immersive Pedrita-designed yoga studio offers meditation, yoga and sound-healing classes. Those with a penchant for body art can pop by the adjacent tattoo studio for expert inkings by some of Lisbon’s top tat artists.

At the hotel

Bar, restaurant, pool, yoga studio, tattoo studio, free WiFi. In rooms: welcome treat, flatscreen TV, bluetooth speaker, free bottled water, tea and coffee maker, robes, slippers and organic local 8950 toiletries.

Our favourite rooms

Masterminded by Lisbon design studio Pedrita, rooms are decorated in warm earthy tones of sage, ochre and pale blue, with white-oak flooring, custom-made beds and colour-popping wool blankets. The unique artworks curated by Lisbon’s ultra-cool Underdogs Gallery also make for great conversation starters. Terrace rooms include – that’s right – a terrace that overlooks the internal courtyard’s lush foliage, colourful wall mural and inky pool, providing a quite excellent spot for a signature tropical pisco at cocktail hour.

Poolside

Slipping into the pool in the courtyard, surrounded by dense foliage, you might be forgiven for imagining yourself in a jungle oasis, albeit a particularly flashy one where you can also order a negroni to your lounger. The pool is open 7am until 11.30pm daily.

Packing tips

Nearby Avenida da Liberdade is modelled on the Champs-Élysées in Paris and enjoys similar notoriety as one of Europe’s most high-end shopping boulevards. Planning to splurge? Pack a spare carry-on bag to ferry your booty back home rather than give your bank manager a coronary when you allow yourself to be tempted by that cute Prada trolley bag.

Also

There’s an onsite yoga studio that runs regular classes and the hotel can book you in to local spas and gyms on request.

Children

The vibe at Hotel Hotel is rather grown-up, but babysitting services can be arranged at a rate of €25 an hour for guests travelling with Little Smiths.

Sustainability efforts

Furniture designed by Portuguese artists and an art collection curated by Lisbon’s Underdogs Gallery keep things satisfyingly local at Hotel Hotel. The restaurant uses seasonal ingredients from Lisbon producers wherever possible, while other eco initiatives include recycled toilet paper, LED lighting and reduced use of plastic packaging.

Food and Drink

Photos Hotel Hotel food and drink

Top Table

Bag a table on the courtyard terrace for intimate dinners surrounded by verdant plantlife.

Dress Code

Get with the arty vibe and don bold, bright colours and adventurous prints for dinner. Short sleeves and plunging necklines are also recommended for showcasing those brand-new tats from the studio downstairs.

Hotel restaurant

A neon sign outside the hotel proclaims ‘animals eat here’. That may well be the case in Restaurant Animal, where the foliage is so dense you wouldn’t be at all astonished if a hungry hippo or salamander emerged and politely asked to join you for dinner. The focus here is on local, seasonal ingredients. Black pork tenderloin is served with sliced jalapeños and pico de gallo and the signature entrecôte with chives and sriracha is fit for a king (of the jungle). Meanwhile, the superb sushi platter is the equal of any you’ll find this side of Tokyo.

Hotel bar

Signature drinks at Bar Animal include Berry Me, a fruity punch of vodka, lemon juice and strawberry puree and a Tropical Pisco with pineapple and coconut foam. It’s open daily from noon to midnight, with live DJs on weekends.

Last orders

Bar Animal stays open until midnight, where live DJs get the party going from 8pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

Room service

Round the clock, with a €5 fee on each order.

Location

Photos Hotel Hotel location
Address
Hotel Hotel
Travessa Glória, 22
Lisbon
1250-118
Portugal

Complete with neon sign declaring ‘animals sleep here’, Hotel Hotel’s gleaming snakeskin facade cuts a provocative dash on this otherwise unassuming side street in central Lisbon, just off bustling Avenida da Liberdade.

Planes

Lisbon Airport is around a 30-minute cab ride from the hotel, give or take a few minutes depending on traffic. Hotel Hotel can book transfers in advance at a cost of €39 for up to three passengers.

Trains

The Lisbon Metro is cheap, efficient and fast with trains that run from the airport to downtown in around 20 minutes. To get to the hotel, change at São Sebastião then disembark at Restauradores station, a few minutes’ stroll from the front door. For day trips to the fairytale palaces of Sintra and beyond, the grand gothic monument that is Rossio train station is about five minutes’ walk from the hotel, at the southern end of Avenida da Liberdade.

Automobiles

Motoring masochists who relish the challenge of negotiating Lisbon’s famously narrow and congested streets can hire a car at the airport, though this is a city that’s best explored on foot and by metro. Parking is available on nearby Restauradores Square for the princely fee of €20 a day.

Worth getting out of bed for

If the hotel’s collection has whet your appetite for great art, you’ll find plenty more in and around the streets of the trendy Principe Réal neighbourhood. Ride the funicular up the steep narrow street that is Calçada da Glória for ringside views of some of the most eye-popping graffiti in town, the walls here providing a huge canvas for up-and-coming urban artists. Disembark at the top of the hill in Bairro Alto, where painterly views across the rooftops of old Alfama to 11th-century São Jorge Castle hit more like the work of an old master than that of a modern graffito.

In Lisbon, there’s even beauty to be found beneath the city streets, where some of Europe’s most exquisite metro stations turn tedious commutes into spellbinding journeys. Indeed Avenida, a mere five minutes’ walk from the hotel, is one of the city’s finest, with hypnotic geometric tiling in greens, yellows and blues by 20th-century Portuguese artist Rogério Ribeiro. Other underground highlights include Maria Keil’s modern riff on Islamic tiling at Rossio and sculptor Francisco Simões extraordinary life-size marble figures of the Women of Lisbon at Campo Pequeno.

Even the most shopping-averse will find it near impossible not to be attracted, like a moth to a flame, to the shiny objects in the windows along Avenida da Liberdade. We’re talking Prada handbags, Armani suits, Louboutin heels, Cartier watches and other eye-wateringly luxurious goods including (but not limited to) perfectly packaged Portuguese wines, perfumes, olive oils and canned sardines.

When it all gets too much, exit stage left to the Jardim do Príncipe Real, where a short spell nursing an espresso and pastel de nata beneath the outspread branches of the park’s 150-year-old cypress tree will soon restore equilibrium. Or mosey on over to the nearby Botanical Garden to experience the exotic sub-tropical species and vibrant butterfly garden that inspired Hotel Hotel’s courtyard garden and living wall.

Local restaurants

One of Avenida da Liberdade’s smartest addresses (and most difficult-to-pronounce names), JNcQUOI is a multi-concept extravaganza that’s part menswear boutique, part period property, part cool cocktail joint and part restaurant. It’s the latter we’re most interested in, and not just for the velociraptor skeleton that dominates the main dining room, looking every bit as ravenous as you might expect in a place like this. On the menu: life-enhancing burrata with lobster, tender Iberico pork and the aptly-named Dinosaur’s Drool dessert, a confection that packs in chocolate mousse, caramel, crumbled cookies, ganache and whipped cream, and for which the term ‘decadent’ may well have been coined. 

Just the other side of the Avenida from Hotel Hotel, Solar dos Presuntos is all old-school Portuguese charm; a place where caricatures and sentimental snaps of beloved guests past and present line the walls and the menu promises unfussy but excellent seafood and local fare. Gorge on cured meats, grilled octopus and lobster and prawn paella.

Local cafés

Red bricks, light woods and hanging plants make fashionable Fabrica Coffee Roasters, just the other side of the Avenida, a strong choice for morning coffee and still-warm croissants. As the name suggests, they roast their own beans and, better yet, coffee here means more than just espresso, with a range that runs the gamut from flat white to frothy cappuccino.

Not a café per se, but it would be remiss to stay in Principe Réal without sampling an ice cream or six from Nannarella on Rua Nova da Piedade. Enter through the ornate azulejo-tiled facade before retreating to a leafy square with your delicious quarry: a traditional Italian gelato in classic stracciatella or pistachio flavours. Or try a seasonal limited edition like pear, pumpkin or pomegranate.

Local bars

Five minutes’ walk from the hotel, Red Frog is a classic speakeasy-style bar complete with chandeliers, low lighting and leather sofas that creak reassuringly when you sit down. Take a medicinal Penicillin (Ardbeg and Copper Dog whiskies blended with honey, ginger and lemon) or say it with flowers with a fragrant rose-and-cucumber Star Fizz shot through with gin.

Sophisticated Cinco Lounge in Principe Réal aims to restore ‘the lost art of polite drinking’. It certainly starts that way, but as refined gimlets and debonair martinis give way to Jumping Jessicas, Hugo-a-Go-Gos and Screaming Orgasms, it’s anyone’s guess as to how politely the evening might pan out.

Reviews

Photos Hotel Hotel reviews

Anonymous review

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this art-loving Lisbon hotel and unpacked their Gucci goodies and MiuMiu mementoes from Avenida da Liberdade’s designer stores, a full account of their boutique break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Hotel Hotel in Lisbon’s Principe Réal neighbourhood…

Hotel Hotel is a work of art all by itself, its striking snakeskin facade by Lisbon artist Maria Ana Vasco Costa flashing ocean blue and emerald green in the sunlight. It’s just the first of many specially commissioned pieces you’ll encounter inside this art-loving hotel, where hipper-than-hip Lisbon design studio Pedrita has sprinkled fairy dust over bedrooms and public areas, and creative types prop up the bar on quirky stools made by Portuguese artists. Follow Pedrita’s extraordinary snake-motif carpet up the sssstairs to your room, or hop in the elevator for doors that glide open to reveal mini art exhibitions curated by the Underdogs Gallery on every floor. Expect eye-popping one-off pieces from contemporary urban masters including Wasted Rita, Pastel, AkaCorleone, André da Loba and more.

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Price per night from $228.03