Wilmina

Wilmina occupies a listed ensemble on Kantstraße, a courthouse and women's prison built in 1896 and in use until 1985. The Berlin practice Grüntuch Ernst Architekten, run by Armand Grüntuch and Almut Grüntuch-Ernst, turned it into a hotel that welcomed its first guests in April 2022, and their restraint is the point. Cell doors, hinges and hatches were left in place, and the barred windows were lengthened towards the floor. The conversion won the German Sustainability Award for Architecture and the Berlin Architecture Prize, and the hotel holds a Michelin Key.

The 44 rooms and suites are arranged around planted courtyards, so every one of them looks onto greenery rather than the street, and the quiet is remarkable for a house on one of West Berlin's busy through roads. Rooms in the old building are calm, in whites and sand tones, and range from 11 to 75 square metres; a separate modern building holds 22 apartments, lofts and penthouses of 80 to 246 square metres for longer stays. On the roof there is a pool, a sauna and a terrace over the rooftops of Charlottenburg.

Lovis, the restaurant, serves contemporary German cooking, Lotta runs as a day bar, and the house bakery, Wilmina Brot, supplies the bread at breakfast. About 45 per cent of the formerly sealed ground has been opened up into gardens and green roofs, and the building draws part of its power from its own photovoltaic system. Charlottenburg S-Bahn station is seven minutes away on foot.