Bulgari Hotel Beijing Opens on the Liangma River

Bulgari Hotel Beijing opened on 27 September 2017. It was the Roman jeweller’s fourth hotel, after Milan, Bali and London, and its first in China. The hotel has 119 rooms and suites and stands on the Liangma River in the embassy district, in the north-east of Beijing.

The Genesis project

The hotel is part of Genesis, a development that also includes an office tower and a small art museum designed by Tadao Ando, set in gardens along the river. The site took seven years to build. It is in Beijing’s diplomatic quarter, close to the Sanlitun district, and its low-key position away from the main avenues was unusual for a luxury hotel in the capital at the time.

Bulgari describes the hotel as an urban resort, and the gardens are the basis of the claim. They run along the riverbank, where the city later built a landscaped promenade, and several of the public rooms open on to them.

Design

As with every Bulgari hotel, the architecture and interiors are by Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel of Milan. The language is the one established in Milan in 2004: dark stone, bronze, walnut and silk, Italian furniture by Maxalto, Flos and B&B Italia, and black-and-white photographs of film stars wearing Bulgari jewels. In Beijing the palette is combined with a few Chinese references, such as gold-toned lacquer and bronze screens. Rooms are large by the city’s standards, and the Bulgari Suite covers nearly 400 square metres.

Restaurant and spa

Il Ristorante Niko Romito was the first restaurant abroad of the chef of Reale, the three-star restaurant in Abruzzo. Romito designed a menu of Italian classics reduced to essentials, which has since been used in every new Bulgari hotel. Il Bar, with its oval counter, follows the model of the Milan original.

The spa covers 1,500 square metres and has eleven treatment rooms. Its 25-metre pool is lined with green and gold mosaic and takes its inspiration from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome.

The Chinese sequence

Beijing was the first of two Chinese openings in nine months: Bulgari Hotel Shanghai followed in June 2018. The brand later reached Japan with Bulgari Hotel Tokyo. In Beijing, the hotel’s main rivals for the same traveller are Aman Summer Palace, at the opposite edge of the city, and the more recent Mandarin Oriental Qianmen in the hutongs.