Europe’s first design hotel celebrates 50th birthday

Europe’s first complete design hotel, Radisson Blu Royal Hotel in the heart of Copenhagen, is to celebrate its 50th birthday.  This unique five-star hotel is as fashionable and interesting now as it was on its opening day on 1st July 1960.  The man behind it all was the famous Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen. The SAS Royal Hotel, as it was first called is a 22-storey building greeting you as you step out of the central railway station and within easy walking distance to the sights and sounds of the Danish capital. Jacobsen’s late Modernist work comes through in the building’s imminent sense of proportion, sense of colour and surface and the importance to details, both outside and in the interiors. This is manifested through the furniture, lamps, fittings and textiles, cutlery, glass and tableware which he designed especially for this hotel.  Among the chairs, The Swan and The Egg are the best known. Both realize the idea and concept of organic form in the use of un-constrained lines. Today the original versions of these are labelled modern classics and fetch very high sums at international auction houses. On the 20th floor you find the Alberto K gourmet restaurant, named after the hotel’s legendary first director. Here you can eat the excellent cuisine with the cutlery Jacobsen created. It was so futuristic of its time, that Stanley Kubrick used it in his film ‘2001 – A Space Odyssey’. Apart from delicious food in design surroundings, you will also have some of the best views of Copenhagen day and night. Fashions have come and gone since the 1960s but if you are planning a stay at this iconic hotel, ask for room 606, as this is completely intact and just how Jacobsen created it right down to the panelling, the lamps, the bed and of course – the chairs!