Hotel Conservatorium

Hotel Conservatorium

On Paulus Potterstraat, a short walk from the Rijksmuseum and closer still to the Concertgebouw, stands a neo-Gothic building designed in 1897 by the Dutch architect Daniel Knuttel, commissioned as the Rijkspostspaarbank and opened to the public in 1901. The bank moved out in 1978; the building stood empty for five years before the Sweelinck Conservatorium took it over, and for a quarter of a century it was Amsterdam's principal music school, until the students moved to a new campus in April 2008. The Akirov family's Alrov Group bought the building that year and spent three years converting it, opening it as the Conservatorium Hotel in December 2011 under the direction of the Milan architect Piero Lissoni, who had already worked with the family on the Mamilla Hotel in Jerusalem. In January 2026 the hotel was rebranded as Mandarin Oriental Conservatorium, Amsterdam, under a new management agreement, though the Akirov family kept ownership through Locka Holding BV. It is 129 rooms and suites across eight floors, with Susanne Hatje as general manager overseeing the transition. Lissoni worked within strict Dutch heritage protections, wrapping the original masonry in a full-height glass atrium floored in pale green Lithoverde stone, with a corten steel staircase and catwalk landings threading through the building's arched windows. Communal furniture comes from Cassina, Living Divani, Kartell and Vitra, mixed with vintage pieces by Hans Wegner and Poul Kjaerholm, and Franco Albini's tables anchor the lobby, where an installation of violins hangs above the room as a nod to the building's conservatory years. Many of the eight floors' duplex suites, ranging from 30 to 170 square metres, keep the original lofted ceilings and exposed beams; the Concerto Suite has a Steinway baby grand. Taiko Cuisine, open since 2014 and now led by head chef Lars Drost, serves modern Asian cooking in the atrium, while Ottolenghi Amsterdam, chef Yotam Ottolenghi's twelfth restaurant and his first in the Netherlands, opened in March 2026 with a vegetable-led, sharing-plate menu modelled on his London restaurant ROVI. The Akasha Spa, at 1,000 square metres the largest hotel spa in the city, has a 60-foot lap pool, a hammam, a Watsu pool and seven treatment rooms. Under Mandarin Oriental's management the hotel has kept Lissoni's interiors and its role as a meeting point for the neighbourhood as much as for guests; the lounge, refreshed for the rebrand, still functions as what staff call the Living Room of Amsterdam, filled through the afternoon with local traffic that treats the atrium as a public room rather than a hotel lobby. This suits people who notice architecture and would rather sit under a glass roof with a pot of tea than move museum to museum without pause; the Museum Quarter address puts the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk and the Concertgebouw all within walking distance, and most guests use the hotel as a base for a city built for walking. The room renovation is happening in phases, starting with the Deluxe category, so finishes are not yet uniform across all 129, which suits travellers more interested in staying inside a significant building than in matching thread counts. You should not come if you want the finish to be identical from room to room this year, since the phased renovation means some categories are ahead of others, or if you would rather be among the canals and back streets of the Jordaan than on the more formal, museum-lined south side of the city. You should come for the building itself, for a lobby that treats a former bank and a former conservatory with equal seriousness, and for a spa and dining programme, from Taiko to the new Ottolenghi room, strong enough to justify staying in on a short trip. The short version: A 129-room hotel in a former 1897 bank and music conservatory in Amsterdam's Museum Quarter, redesigned by Piero Lissoni, rebranded Mandarin Oriental Conservatorium in January 2026, with Taiko, a new Ottolenghi restaurant, and the city's largest hotel spa.