Bulgari Hotel Shanghai Opens on Suzhou Creek

Bulgari Hotel Shanghai opened on 20 June 2018 on the north bank of Suzhou Creek, in a part of the city that had been outside the usual luxury map. It is the Roman jeweller’s sixth hotel and has 82 rooms, including 19 suites, on the upper floors of a 48-storey tower, with views over the creek to the Bund and the towers of Lujiazui.

The hotel is in two parts. The rooms, the spa and the Italian restaurant are in the tower, whose interiors, like those of every Bulgari hotel, were designed by the Milan practice Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel. At its foot stands the former Chamber of Commerce building, completed in 1916 and restored for the project, which houses the Chinese restaurant and the ballroom and is surrounded by private gardens.

Il Ristorante is directed by Niko Romito, the Italian chef who oversees the group’s restaurants, and Bao Li Xuan serves Cantonese fine dining in the heritage building. Il Bar and La Terrazza, a rooftop terrace with a view in every direction, complete the list. The hotel also opened with the first Il Cioccolato chocolate shop and workshop in China.

The spa covers 2,000 square metres, with eight treatment rooms and a 25-metre heated indoor pool, and there is a gym and private training and yoga studios. The rooms were presented as among the largest in the city.

For Jean-Christophe Babin, chief executive of Bulgari, the hotels are a way of sharing Italian design and hospitality around the world. In Shanghai the opening also made a point about the city: that the restored warehouses and civic buildings along Suzhou Creek could carry a hotel of this level. Other projects have since followed on the same stretch of water, among them Regent Shanghai on the Bund.

The brand’s next Asian hotel, Bulgari Hotel Tokyo, opened in 2023. OKYTO’s page on Bulgari Hotel Shanghai covers the stay, and our Shanghai guide the city.