Riggs Washington DC

Riggs Washington DC

Riggs Washington DC occupies the 1891 headquarters of Riggs National Bank, once nicknamed the Bank of Presidents, on the corner of 9th and F Street in Penn Quarter, within a kilometre of the International Spy Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and Madame Tussauds Washington D.C. Its 181 rooms echo the building's former life, each styled like a private safety deposit box, with individually decorated interiors, Tempur-Pedic beds, down comforters, Egyptian cotton sheets, minibars and smart televisions. Downstairs, the original bank vault now houses a bar run by the internationally recognised Mr Lyan team, a detail few historic hotel conversions can match, while Café Riggs serves an all-day American brasserie menu with cooked-to-order breakfasts on weekdays and weekends. A 24-hour health club, spa, massage room and indoor pool cover the practical side of a stay, and two meeting rooms with roughly 2,500 square feet of space suit small conferences as easily as a weekend away. Staff speak English, Spanish, German, Russian, French and Chinese, and digital check-in lets guests skip the front desk, with a room key that lives in a phone wallet. Families can book a Deluxe Quadruple Room set up for four adults and three children, or a larger family room built for up to eight adults and five children, though anyone chasing a hushed retreat should look elsewhere, since this is a building built for street-level energy, not quiet corners. Pets are welcome for a deposit, extra beds run thirty dollars a night, and check-in starts at four in the afternoon. What no competitor nearby can copy is the vault itself, a piece of 1891 banking history now poured full of cocktails instead of cash. Riggs Washington DC turns a 19th-century bank into a 181-room hotel, its vault now a bar and each room nodding to a safety deposit box. It suits history-minded travellers wanting Penn Quarter comfort, not those after a quiet hideaway.