Hotel Bristol

The piano

Ask for Room 211 by its other name

Hotel Bristol stands on Krakowskie Przedmieście, the stretch of Warsaw’s Royal Route that runs to Castle Square, under half a mile up the street. The hotel dates its first guest to November 1901 and names three founders; one of them was a concert pianist, Ignacy Jan Paderewski. You come for the suite that carries his name.

In 1919, the hotel says, Paderewski came back to Warsaw as prime minister of a reborn Poland and set up his office in Room 211. The hotel now calls it the Paderewski Suite. It is on the second floor and runs to 1,184 square feet: a bedroom, a living room, a dining room, a library, two bathrooms in gray marble.

In the living room stands a white Petrof grand on gilded legs, with a needlepoint stool. A brass-horn gramophone waits by the marble fireplace. On the desk, a candlestick telephone. The windows open, and they look down on the Royal Route.

The suite comes with a car from Chopin Airport, about twenty minutes away when the roads are clear, and with a bottle from the Paderewski Vineyard in California. The hotel serves that wine in this suite and nowhere else.

The window

If the suite is taken, take a corner

Every room has mahogany-framed windows, and each looks at one of four things: the Royal Route, a park, the inner courtyard, or the Presidential Palace, where Chopin, aged eight, gave his first concert. Ask for the street. The hotel recalls that in 1958 the tenor Jan Kiepura sang from its balcony, and that his voice carried over the Royal Route.

The Deluxe Suites sit on the corners, 979 to 1,065 square feet, with the Royal Route on one side and the park on the other. After his suite, it is the one to book.

From the street side you can follow the Royal Route south. About two miles down it is Royal Łazienki Park, where Chopin is played at his monument on summer Sundays (Haven Nº 044). Walk there after lunch; take a car back.

Breakfast is downstairs at Marconi, from 6:30 to 10:30. Before it, swim: the spa’s pool is heated and indoors, open from 8 a.m., and the gym on the sixth floor never closes.

The lift

Find the Crystal Lift

By the hotel’s account, the Bristol opened with its own power plant and eleven elevators, the Crystal Lift among them. Look for it: two brass doors between white wrought-iron grilles. Then look up in the lobby, at a ceiling of Art Nouveau flowers. The hotel credits the building to Władysław Marconi and the interiors to Otto Wagner Jr., and it has been a listed monument since 1965.

The hotel keeps its guests on a wall of brass studs, each engraved with a name. Edvard Grieg. Douglas Fairbanks. Józef Piłsudski. Jan Kiepura. The painter Wojciech Kossak. In 1913, the hotel says, its Malinowa Salon gave a banquet for Marie Skłodowska-Curie’s second Nobel Prize, and it has received nearly every Polish laureate since.

The cake

Café Bristol, since 1901

Café Bristol dates itself to 1901. The floor is a checkerboard of cream, maroon and black. The tables are marble, the sofas red and curved, and the counter is mahogany and mirror, with crystal cases full of pastry. Tall windows look out on the trees.

Order the Tort Bristol: Polish plums, hazelnut cream with a crunch, a light sponge, a chocolate finish. Or the millefeuille with raspberries. For the hotel’s 125th anniversary, the countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, born in Warsaw, signed a limited edition of the Tort, sold only here. The café opens every day from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Paderewski is on the wall here too, in a gilt frame between two brass sconces, arms crossed. The hotel serves afternoon tea on Thursdays, from 2 to 5 p.m., with Dammann Frères teas, and on other days on request.

The columns

Jazz at six, champagne on the roof

The Column Bar opens at noon and closes at eleven. Two white columns frame the bottles, the stools are green, and there is live jazz on Thursday afternoons from two to five, and on Friday and Saturday from six to nine. Dress smart casual. Lane’s Gin Bar opens at three and pours until 1 a.m., until 2 on Thursday to Saturday nights.

In season, the Champagne Bar by Lane’s opens on the roof, above the Royal Route. Go up an hour before sunset.

The door

August 1, 5 p.m.

Most of Warsaw was destroyed in the war; the hotel puts it at more than 80 percent of the city. By its own account, the Bristol is the only hotel in the capital that came through the occupation and the 1944 Uprising, and its Polish staff stayed on.

Every August 1, at 5 p.m., sirens sound across Warsaw for the W Hour, the hour the Uprising began in 1944. The hotel says its staff then step outside the building and stand in silence. If you are in the city that day, be outside the front door a little before five, and stand with them.

Once a year, when the sirens sound at 5 p.m., the staff step outside and stand still.

Then go back in. The café is open until seven.