Hotel de Filosoof

Hotel de Filosoof Review

Bona-fide Amsterdam philosophers can regularly be found ensconced in this hotel's comfy armchairs. Monthly lectures and discussion evenings are hosted here for locals, many of whom are, naturally, artists, writers, and thinkers. Even the decorator of this hotel has picked up on the philosophical motif: each of the guest rooms is decorated with a different theme. (There is an Aristotle room furnished in Greek style, with passages from the works of Greek philosophers hung on the walls, and a Goethe room adorned with Faustian texts.) Some of the rooms are a little silly—the Walden, for instance, sports some landscape daubs on the wall—but the Spinoza is a total knockout: an homage to Golden Age style, complete with black-and-white floors, a 19th-century library lamp, and framed paintings, it is a jewel that fancier hotels in town could well take as a model. Enjoy breakfast, or merely relax, in the large garden.