Review of Hotel Plaza Athenee, by Mark Jolly

The Plaza Athenee is the sort of luxury hotel that can - and often does - run at full occupancy, yet you don't even know it. A short stroll from Central Park in New York, the 80-year-old property morphed from a residential into a commercial luxury hotel two decades ago, retaining its operational code of understated elegance. (Check-in feels like a sort of low-key chat in the study, but with a glamorous Euro-babe whose accent you can't quite place.) Unlike Manhattan's other uber-luxe five-stars, like the Four Seasons and the Mandarin Oriental, the Plaza Athenee is not a place to be seen. It's a place to come and disappear from all the noise and glitz.

The facilities

That said, the romantic, leather-floored Bar Seine hasn't quite been the same since it was featured on Sex and the City (even though its music policy affords customers the dying Manhattan art form of bar conversation without shouting). And the chandeliered, gold-domed restaurant, Arabelle, is still a favourite haunt for Upper East Side socialites at this luxury hotel.

The rooms

The Plaza Athenee boasts 117 rooms where 300x330-foot superior rooms are generously sized by Manhattan standards, while eight of the suites feature outside balconies. The two penthouse suites on the 16th and 17th floors boast wraparound terraces. (One was home to Princess Diana whenever she was in town; and the other has been continuously occupied by a single guest for the past two years, to the tune of $3,900 per night.) Attention to detail (freshly ironed shower curtains, anyone?) is faultless, and the décor is suitably soothing.