Paleis Hotel, The Hague, Netherlands

The Paleis is a boutique hotel situated on a narrow street in the heart of The Hague, right next to the Royal Palace, but manages the neat trick of being calm and quiet once inside.

The facilities

The lobby is small and informal, and walking into it feels – as is doubtless the intention – a little like strolling into someone’s living room. The Paleis is situated in a 17th-century terrace – a lovely building, which can also claim a literary heritage. The late 19th/early 20th-century Dutch author and poet Louis Couperus often stayed in the building, which at the time belonged to his brother-in-law – and which, according to the Paleis’ current owners, made several appearances in Couperus’s novels.

The rooms
This boutique hotel prides itself on its quirkiness, and justifiably so. Each one of the 20 rooms is different, and furnished and decorated in styles united only by their refusal to descend into the prevailing cliches of modern hotels: the Paleis has no truck with either too-cool-by-half minimalism, or could-be-anywhere blandness.

The colour schemes in the rooms, dictated by fabrics from the French designer Pierre Frey, are occasionally somewhat startling, but always redeemed the right side of outright garishness by well-chosen pictures and furniture. The bed linen embroidered with the hotel’s logo is an appealing old-school foible.

The rooms are also well-fitted with basic necessities. There are coffee-and-tea making facilities, decently stocked and not outrageously priced minibars and safes; most rooms also have air-conditioning. The bathrooms are smartly tiled in black and white, and feature the unusual touch of a dimmer switch for the lights.

While the boutique hotel as a whole is surprisingly quiet, given its central location, guests for whom silence is especially important should ask for rooms away from the street, which have the added bonus of overlooking a leafy courtyard and offering fine views over surrounding rooftops.