Rosewood Phnom Penh Opens at the Top of Vattanac Capital
Rosewood's first city hotel in Southeast Asia opened in February 2018 with 175 rooms at the top of Vattanac Capital and a bar on a terrace cantilevered 188 metres up.
Rosewood Phnom Penh opened in February 2018 on the top floors of Vattanac Capital, the 39-storey tower that is the tallest building in the Cambodian capital and, with its curved profile, the most recognisable. It was Rosewood’s first city hotel in Southeast Asia, and the first international luxury hotel of a new generation in a city that had been served for decades by a single grand colonial address.
The hotel has 175 rooms, including 37 suites. The rooms start at 50 square metres, large for the city, and have deep window seats looking over the roofs of the old French quarter to the point where the Tonle Sap river joins the Mekong. The largest suite, Norodom House, covers 225 square metres.
The interiors were designed by BAR Studio of Melbourne, and combine Khmer motifs, references to the French colonial period and the work of Cambodian craftspeople in silk, lacquer and stone. An art gallery within the hotel shows contemporary Cambodian artists. The restaurants were designed by Bond Design Studio of Tokyo.
The most talked-about space is Sora, a bar on the 37th floor that extends onto a terrace cantilevered from the side of the tower, open to the sky, 188 metres above the street. Brasserie Louis, on the 35th floor, serves French and Cambodian dishes; Iza is a Japanese izakaya with a robata grill; and Cuts is a steakhouse. The Living Room, with a library, is the place for breakfast and afternoon tea.
Phnom Penh is often treated as a stop of a night or two on the way to Angkor, and it deserves more. The Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda, the National Museum, with the finest collection of Khmer sculpture in the world, the riverfront and a restaurant and bar scene of real energy fill several days. The hotel stands on Monivong Boulevard, close to the Central Market and a few minutes by car from the river.
The opening came during a busy period for Rosewood in the region, between Rosewood Phuket in 2017 and Rosewood Luang Prabang a few weeks later. Elsewhere in Cambodia, Six Senses Krabey Island opened the following year, and Koh Ker joined the World Heritage List in 2023.