Pucic Palace by The TI Review Team

TI reviwer Roger Williams:
This is the main – and until recently, the only – hotel in Dubrovnik’s Old Town, an elegant 18th-century Baroque palace that still aspires to be a stately home.. For the rest of the day the tables of its own Cafe Royal merge with those of the surroundings restaurants to make an animated spot. The five-star hotel has 19 modest-sized, high-ceiling rooms, including suites, that look down either on the square or on Od Puca, a colourful shopping lane where the hotel’s entrance lies. The most stately suite, the Gundulic on the first floor, has two windows and a balcony overlooking the square. Double glazing keeps out the street chatter. Newly refurbished, the hotel maintains a cultural air with antiques and artworks, and each of the rooms is themed after a local artist or literary figure. The rooms have parquet floors, wood beamed ceilings and hand-woven rugs; beds are plump with fresh linen. Bathroms sparkle with Italian mosaics and guests can steam in the copper and porcelain freestanding baths. There is a “personal linen menu” for Egyptian cotton towels. Otherwise just about everything you may want is on call 24 hours a day from the obliging staff. The Cafe Royal restaurant, which spills on to the square, has a good reputation, skating around the Croatian culinary edge with such innovations as “stone soup, flavoured with the minerals of the pebbles from the Adriatic Sea”. At the back of the hotel is a terrace where the Defne restaurant serves Mediterranean dishes. There is also a bar, Razonda, on street level in Od Puca.