Hotel description

With the Soviet era just a fading memory, and the Baltics now absorbed into the EU, it was only a matter of time before the concept of the design hotel touched down in Latvia. Within the walls of these two late nineteenth-century buildings lies what may be Riga’s most stylish lodging, the Hotel Bergs.

The look here is surprisingly mature and elegant, eschewing eye candy and non-functional design hysterics in favor of a muted palette of greys, browns and creams, incorporating remnants of the district’s art nouveau heritage and the original century-old brickwork of the facade.

Anyone entertaining a 1980s misperception of Riga as some kind of backwater will be surprised to discover just how up-to-date the Hotel Bergs is. You’ll find CD and DVD players in every room, wi-fi access throughout, and, perhaps most tellingly, utterly modern bathrooms with brand-new fixtures and heated floors. Studios come with a small sitting area beside the bed, with armchairs and sofas, and the apartment suites have functional kitchens. Loft suites are quite literally lofts, with sleeping quarters up a small spiral staircase, and the penthouse could pass for a luxury residence.

Downstairs one finds two lounges, an African-themed bar and one of the city’s finest restaurants. Somehow, though, amid all this hipness, the Bergs retains a measure of calm-though it seems to us the best hotel in town, there’s delightfully little fuss about the place. At just 38 rooms, it’s perhaps too intimate to be much of a social scene; just a hotel, and a fine one.