How many nights does Capella Hanoi deserve?

Two nights is the shortest stay that works, and three is better. The hotel itself takes an evening to read, because there is something painted, framed or hung on almost every surface and you keep stopping. Add the Living Room ritual at the end of each day, a morning at Backstage and one dinner in the building, and two nights is already full. The Old Quarter and the lake are a walk away, so a third night buys you the city without moving hotels.

Is it a good base for seeing Hanoi on foot?

Yes, and that is a large part of why I would choose it. It sits in the French Quarter at a busy junction, with the Opera House a few minutes away and Hoan Kiem Lake a short walk. The Old Quarter begins just beyond that. You step out of a very quiet building into a street full of motorbikes and horns, and you step back into the quiet when you have had enough, which is the thing a city hotel has to get right.

What is included in the rate, beyond the room?

More than most hotels at this level include. The minibar comes with the room, soft drinks and snacks and chocolates, and the quality of it is high. Coffee and tea are available in the Living Room all day. Afternoon tea is served there, and so is the evening hour with champagne, cocktails, canapés and live music. There is a calendar of activities inside the hotel through the week, coffee cupping, calligraphy, paper craft, a tea session, a leather class, To He figures and a morning run. Spirits and wine from the room bar are a separate matter and sit on the bill. The Virtuoso benefits are added on top of all of this, so the two stack.

Which restaurants are in the building, and which one has the star?

Backstage on the ground floor is the main room and serves breakfast and northern Vietnamese cooking through the day. Koki holds the Japanese dining, and inside it Hibana by Koki is the teppanyaki counter that carries one Michelin star. The Hudson Rooms is a seafood and grill bistro done as 1920s New York, with Track 61 hidden behind it, and Diva's Lounge is the Art Deco bar for cocktails. Backstage and the Izakaya at Koki have both been listed by Michelin as well.

What exactly comes with the evening ritual?

Champagne and cocktails poured without a tab, canapés brought to the table, and live music in the room. It happens in the Living Room, the lounge by the entrance where guests also check in. There is an afternoon tea earlier in the day in the same room. All of it is part of staying there, and nothing came to the bill.

Are the pool and the spa worth the time?

La Grotta, the indoor pool, is the piece of the hotel I would not skip. It runs long and narrow under a line of lit glass, with green and white marble on the floor and mirrors overhead, and it looks like a set. You are given a drink, crisps and a cold towel when you arrive at it. I walked through Auriga, the spa, and saw the treatment rooms and the hydrotherapy area, and I did not book a treatment, so I cannot tell you how the hands are. If a treatment matters to your stay, book it before you come.

Inspection · Hanoi, Vietnam

Capella Hanoi

Forty-seven rooms in the French Quarter, each one given to a performer of the 1920s, inside a building Bill Bensley filled to the ceiling. The loudest hotel I have stayed in, and one of the most precise.

Musidora Suite Virtuoso

Book Capella Hanoi with me, through Classic Travel Register first, free of charge, and the rates and partner benefits open up, with the account linked to Wheresnik. Tell me your dates before you book and I will say which room to ask for here, and which week I would avoid.

Capella Hanoi has forty-seven rooms and not one of them is the same as another. The building sits on a corner of the French Quarter, a few minutes from the Opera House and a short walk from Hoan Kiem Lake, and it was given to Bill Bensley, the American landscape architect who has built something like two hundred hotels across fifty countries and who does nothing quietly. He treated the place as a jewel box for the opera: a house where singers, composers, dancers and designers of the 1920s might have come to eat after a performance and stayed too late. Every room carries the name of one of them. Every corridor carries their faces. It opened in 2021, and it is the most decorated interior I have walked into.

A mustard velvet sofa and a dark chaise longue in front of a painted mural of a temple among palms, on a herringbone floor — The Living Room, which is where the hotel explains itself. The temple in the mural is Ngoc Son, ten minutes from the door on the lake.

I should say at the start what this hotel is not. It is not restful to look at. The first ten minutes are loud: gold, lacquer, fringe, mirror, murals of crowds staring back at you. If your idea of a good room is pale linen and nothing on the walls, you will want to go somewhere else and you will be right to. What happened to me is that the eye settles, quite quickly, and then the detail starts paying you back. After a day I was finding things I had walked past four times.

Arriving

You come in off the junction and the noise stops at the door. The entrance is a tall Art Deco canopy of black steel and lit glass, and the lobby behind it is small, because this is a city building and the ground floor has work to do. The reception desk is there, the Living Room is there, and the lift is there, and all three are covered in painted people.

The hotel's name in brass letters on a dark stone wall, lit from above with small star-shaped lights — The name on the wall outside. The stars above it turn up again on the floors, the china and the napkins.

A tiered glass chandelier under a gilded ceiling rose, above a mirrored doorway — The ceiling over the entrance. Look up on the way in, because almost nobody does.

A hall with a red lacquered panel of figures and trees, a black console table and a patterned stool — The hall past reception. The red panel is lacquer, worked in relief, and it runs the height of the wall.

A round floral sofa with a red fringed base at the centre of a marble floor laid in a geometric pattern — The round sofa in the lobby. The floor under it is laid in four marbles and is worth a look down.

A gilded winged figure on a plinth beside palms, in front of a tall white atrium window — A gilded figure by the window. The hotel puts a statue where another building would put nothing.

A reception counter in pale marble with a lacquer cabinet beside it and a patterned sofa in front — Reception. Check-in happens sitting down in the Living Room, so this desk is quieter than it looks.

The Living Room is the Capella idea, and it is the reason to care about this hotel beyond the decoration. It is a lounge off the entrance that belongs to guests all day. Soft drinks, coffee and tea come from it whenever you want them. In the afternoon there is tea. In the evening, every evening, it turns into a party that costs nothing: champagne and cocktails poured freely, canapés carried round, a band playing. I came down both nights. The second night I had meant to stay twenty minutes.

A black marble table set with a coupe glass, a napkin and a small dish, with a backpack on the banquette — The welcome drink, brought to the table while I checked in. Check-in happens sitting here, with the bag still beside you.

A dark console table with two low chairs in front of it, under lit palms and a table lamp — A corner of the ground floor set up with lamps and palms. Another building would have left this wall bare.

A banquette in blue patterned fabric behind a small round table, on a floor of broad black and white stripes — Another corner of the same room. The floor stripes run the length of the ground floor and pull you towards the bar.

The Musidora Suite

My room was Musidora, named for Jeanne Roques, the French actress who took that stage name and who played Irma Vep in the serial Les Vampires in 1915. She acted, then directed, then wrote. Her face is in the room, on the wall and in the frames by the bed, and once I had looked her up I found the room had been put together by somebody who knew exactly who she was. That is the trick of this hotel. The themes are not wallpaper. Somebody did the reading.

A black oval table laid with a napkin, a coupe glass, a glass cloche, a handwritten card and a bottle in a brass ice bucket — What was waiting on the table. The card was handwritten and used my name and the reason I was in the city.

A pair of tortoiseshell spectacles on a black stand beside a Capella box and a printed card — A spectacle stand, a leather coaster set and laundry bags, all laid out. The card offers to sell you any of it to take home.

A brass tray holding a cocktail shaker, a bottle of bitters, a strainer and two cut glasses on a marble top — The bar end of the suite. Shaker, strainer, jigger and bitters, set up for somebody who actually makes drinks.

The suite runs as a line of rooms. You come in past the bar, into a sitting room with a sofa, a low table and a French Juliet balcony, then past the bathroom, and the bedroom is at the end. The minibar is included, and the chocolates and nuts in it were better than that word usually means. There is a coffee kit. There is a Marshall speaker. There is a black rotary telephone that works.

A curved mustard velvet sofa and two stools on a pink and black patterned rug, under a painted panel and a lantern — The sitting room. The rug is the quietest thing in it, and that is saying something.

A black fringed lamp beside a black rotary telephone on a side table, against a painted wall — The lamp and the telephone. Both work, and the telephone is the one guests photograph.

The same oval welcome table seen from above, with the glass, the card, the spectacles and the ice bucket — The welcome table from above, before anything had been moved.

A wide bed with white linen under a tall mirrored headboard, on a black and gold patterned rug — The bed. The rug under it is the Art Deco note the room keeps returning to.

A made bed with a folded pair of pyjamas laid across it and framed pictures on the wall behind — Turndown leaves the pyjamas out. They also leave a card telling you what tomorrow's weather will be.

A black rotary telephone, a cut-glass water carafe, an eye mask and a leather roll on a bedside table — The bedside at night: water, an eye mask, and a card with the next day's forecast.

The bathroom is where the money went. Marble on the floor in a chevron, a freestanding ribbed bath, a separate walk-in shower lined in mosaic, a lit mirror at each basin and two deep red robes on the hooks. The robes are the softest I have put on in a hotel and I thought about the suitcase.

A ribbed freestanding bath in a white marble bathroom, with two lit mirrors and a deep red robe hanging by the shower — The bathroom. Those red robes are the thing guests ask the price of on the way out.

A walk-in shower lined in small white mosaic tiles with a patterned border and a brass rain head — The shower is separate from the bath, and the mosaic border is laid by hand.

A rolled white towel and a small bottle of Creed on a brass tray across the rim of the bath — The tray across the bath. The small bottle is Creed, and it is not a sample you leave behind.

Because the hotel has forty-seven rooms and all of them differ, I asked to see others, and the staff walked me round without making it a performance. One bedroom has a painted mural behind the bed. One has a black four-poster with feathered finials. One suite has its own dining table for six. The top rooms open onto terraces. If you are choosing, the thing to ask is which room, not which category.

A bed under a mirrored and painted ceiling, with a large painted panel of figures behind the headboard — Another room, with a painted panel behind the bed and a mirrored ceiling above it.

A black four-poster bed with dark feathered finials at each corner, in front of a painted landscape — A four-poster with feathers at the corners. Every room has one idea it commits to.

A curved cream sofa and two patterned armchairs around a dark round table, under a mirrored ceiling — The sitting room of one of the larger suites, with the ceiling mirrored over it.

What is on the walls

The murals are the part I kept coming back to. There is a corridor of photographers with flashbulbs going off, painted at full height in grey, so that walking down it feels like arriving somewhere you should not be. There is a wall of women in 1910s hats and furs. The lift is lined with a crowd in evening dress who watch you ride. The artist who did the portraits through the hotel is Kate Spencer, and the work is specific enough that you can tell the figures apart.

A full-height grey mural of women in wide hats and fur collars, above a striped marble floor — The wall of women by the lifts. Painted at full height, and the faces are all different.

A corridor with a painted crowd of photographers firing flashbulbs, beside a red velvet curtain — The press corridor. The flashbulbs are painted, the curtain is real, and the effect is deliberate.

The inside of a lift lined with a painted crowd in evening dress, with brass rails and a tiled floor — Inside the lift. A crowd in evening dress rides with you to your floor.

Backstage, and breakfast

Backstage is the ground-floor restaurant, under a coffered ceiling of gold squares with lights set into them, with red chairs and black lacquer tables. Michelin has listed it. It runs all day and it is where breakfast happens.

A dining room with red chairs at black tables under a gold coffered ceiling studded with lights — Backstage. The ceiling is the reason to look up from the menu.

A table laid with white linen, a fringed pendant lamp above it and a spray of yellow blossom in a vase — A table laid for dinner, with the yellow blossom the hotel uses everywhere in January.

A painted paper fan open on a stand beside a tall vase of yellow blossom — A fan and a branch of blossom by the entrance. In January the whole building is dressed in yellow for Tet.

Breakfast is the meal I would plan around. There is a counter of pastries and a cold table, and then a kitchen that cooks Vietnamese to order: pho, bun cha, bread rolls with the herbs and the chilli brought separately. There is a long list of fresh juices. There is champagne, and on my stay it was Taittinger. The china has a 1920s face painted on each piece.

A counter of croissants, pains au chocolat and small cakes under brass shelving — The pastry counter. The cold table carries on behind it with cheese, fruit and cured things.

Two poached eggs on salmon and greens on a rosti, on a white plate beside a coupe of champagne — Eggs with salmon from the kitchen, and the morning champagne beside it.

A bowl of clear broth with chilli and herbs on a patterned plate, with a side dish of leaves — The pho, made to order. Order this and the pastries will still be there afterwards.

A coffee cup painted with the face of a woman in 1920s dress, on a matching saucer beside a Capella sugar packet — The breakfast china. Every piece carries a different painted face.

Three brass jugs and a small cup on a trolley set with saucers, in front of a window — Brass jugs on the trolley, for the Vietnamese coffee.

A bottle of Taittinger in a brass ice bucket in front of a red velvet curtain — The champagne on the breakfast list during my stay.

La Grotta

A long indoor swimming pool with green and white marble around it, under a line of lit glass domes and a mirrored ceiling — La Grotta. It runs the length of the floor under a line of lit glass, and the ceiling above it is mirrored.

The indoor pool is the single best room in the building. It is long and narrow, the floor around it is laid in green and white marble in a diamond pattern, the ceiling is mirrored, and a line of lit glass domes runs the whole way down. When you arrive somebody brings a drink, a bowl of crisps and a cold towel. I swam in the late afternoon with nobody else in the water and it was the quietest half hour of the trip.

Auriga is the spa, and I walked it without booking a treatment, so I can tell you what the rooms look like and nothing about the hands. The treatment rooms are green and gold with painted ceilings, there is a double room, and there is a hydrotherapy area to use afterwards. If the spa is part of why you are coming, book before you arrive.

The brass ladder rails at the edge of the long indoor pool, with a tiered glass chandelier above and a mirrored ceiling — The ladder into the big pool. The chandelier over it is doubled by the mirrored ceiling and again by the water.

A corridor papered in a gold fan pattern, with a console table, a lamp and a stool on an inlaid floor — The corridor into Auriga. The gold fans are painted onto the wall, and the floor is laid in four stones.

A lounge in pale wood and green velvet under a timber coffered ceiling, with a bar at the far end — The lounge at Koki, which is calmer than everything around it, and deliberately so.

A long narrow dining room with a curved ceiling, banquettes down one side and tables laid in a row — The Hudson Rooms, set for dinner. Seafood and grill, done as 1920s New York.

A teppanyaki counter in pale wood with chairs set around three sides and a steel plate at the centre — The counter at Hibana by Koki, which holds a Michelin star. It seats very few people.

Shelves of spirits above a wooden humidor cabinet with a hygrometer on its front — The humidor behind the Hudson Rooms. Ask, and somebody takes you through to Track 61.

The evening

The ritual in the Living Room is at the centre of the day here. Champagne poured at the table, cocktails from a long list, canapés carried round, and a band. It is free-flow and nothing arrives on the bill. The crowd is small, because the hotel is small, and by the second evening you recognise people.

A glass being filled with champagne at a dark marble table, poured by a waiter in black — Champagne poured at the table during the evening hour. Nobody opens a tab.

A marble table with two glasses of wine, bowls of nuts and crisps and a water glass, in a lit lounge — The table at six. The canapés keep coming for as long as you sit there.

A bar with red velvet stools in front of shelves of bottles under a gilded ceiling — Diva's Lounge, the Art Deco bar. The stools are the best seats in the building for a late drink.

What the rate already pays for

This is the part that changes the arithmetic, and it is worth setting out plainly before you compare the room price with anything else in the city. The minibar is included, soft drinks and snacks and chocolates, and the quality of it is not the usual tray of forgotten biscuits. Coffee and tea come from the Living Room all day. Afternoon tea is served there. The evening hour with champagne, cocktails and canapés is included, every night, with the band. On top of that there is a calendar of things to do inside the building: coffee cupping, calligraphy, paper craft, a Japanese tea session, a leather-making class, To He, which is the Vietnamese figure modelled from rice flour that children have been given for generations, and a morning run for anyone who wants it. The hotel calls them Capella Moments and the list rotates through the week.

Then the Virtuoso rate sits on top of all that. An upgrade on arrival when the hotel has one. Breakfast for two. A credit to spend inside the hotel during the stay. Early check-in and late check-out when the house can manage it. None of that replaces what is already included, which means the two stack.

The last piece is the arithmetic of size. Forty-seven rooms is small enough that the staff learn who you are on the first evening, and by the second they are ahead of you. That is the thing the photographs cannot show and the reason the service held up under all that decoration.

Is it worth it

Yes, with one condition. Capella Hanoi is a hotel for somebody who wants the building to be an event. If you want calm walls you will fight it for three days. If you want a house with a story in every room, there is nothing else in Hanoi doing this, and the service underneath the decoration is precise in a way the decoration might make you doubt. Handwritten cards with your name on them. A weather card at turndown. Staff who walked me through four rooms because I asked.

I slept in the Musidora Suite and saw a good number of the others, which is the only way to say anything useful about a hotel where no two rooms are alike. The interiors, the room, the breakfast and the warmth of the people working there are the four things I would name, and I would book it again for Hanoi without looking at the alternatives. It suits anybody who wants a high-end stay in this city and wants to come away with a real sense of Vietnamese hospitality, which is a different thing from a well-run international hotel that happens to stand in Vietnam.

What I would do differently is stay longer. Two nights let me see the hotel and gave me one evening for the city. Three would have fixed that.

An unmade bed with white linen and black-edged pillows in the morning light, with the painted wall behind — The morning after. This is the one photograph in the piece that was not arranged.

A small balcony with a brass rail and a lamp on a marble table, looking across to a white building with a green roof — The Juliet balcony off the room, looking across the junction. The city starts about a metre away.

Where it is

11 Le Phung Hieu, Hanoi, in the French Quarter, about half an hour in from the airport. The Opera House is a few minutes on foot, Hoan Kiem Lake a short walk, and the Old Quarter begins on the far side of it. Booked through Classic Travel on the Virtuoso programme, which carries an upgrade on arrival when the hotel has one, breakfast for two, a credit to use in the hotel during the stay, and early check-in and late check-out when they are available. Write to me and I will tell you which of the forty-seven rooms I would ask for.

The five

What I would tell a friend before they left.

Be in the Living Room at sixEvery evening the Living Room pours champagne and cocktails, puts out canapés and brings in live music, and all of it comes with the room. I went down both evenings I was there. It runs long enough that you can come back from the lake, change, and still find it going. Treat it as the hour the hotel is built around, because it is the one time the whole house is in one place.
Ask which performer your room is named for, before you bookEach of the forty-seven rooms belongs to one figure of the 1920s stage and screen, and the room is decorated around that person. Mine was Musidora, the French silent-film actress who played Irma Vep in Les Vampires, and her face and her story were in the room with me. The rooms are genuinely different from one another, so the name is the question to ask when you book.
Ask to be walked into Track 61Behind the Hudson Rooms there is a second bar you do not find by yourself. You ask, and somebody takes you through. Rum and a cigar is what it is set up for. I would not call ahead about it, because being shown in is most of the pleasure.
Book Hibana by Koki before you arriveThe teppanyaki counter at Hibana holds one Michelin star and the room seats very few people. A table on the night is not something to count on. Decide at the time you book the room, and tell the hotel then.
Take breakfast slowly, and eat VietnameseBreakfast at Backstage runs from a pastry counter and a cold table through to a kitchen that will cook you pho and bun cha. There is champagne on the list in the morning. I had the pho and a coffee in a Capella cup with a 1920s face painted on it, and that was the right order of things.

The list goes on. Guests who book with me receive the rest before departure.

Before you book

The questions people send me about Capella Hanoi.

How many nights does Capella Hanoi deserve?: Two nights is the shortest stay that works, and three is better. The hotel itself takes an evening to read, because there is something painted, framed or hung on almost every surface and you keep stopping. Add the Living Room ritual at the end of each day, a morning at Backstage and one dinner in the building, and two nights is already full. The Old Quarter and the lake are a walk away, so a third night buys you the city without moving hotels.
Is it a good base for seeing Hanoi on foot?: Yes, and that is a large part of why I would choose it. It sits in the French Quarter at a busy junction, with the Opera House a few minutes away and Hoan Kiem Lake a short walk. The Old Quarter begins just beyond that. You step out of a very quiet building into a street full of motorbikes and horns, and you step back into the quiet when you have had enough, which is the thing a city hotel has to get right.
What is included in the rate, beyond the room?: More than most hotels at this level include. The minibar comes with the room, soft drinks and snacks and chocolates, and the quality of it is high. Coffee and tea are available in the Living Room all day. Afternoon tea is served there, and so is the evening hour with champagne, cocktails, canapés and live music. There is a calendar of activities inside the hotel through the week, coffee cupping, calligraphy, paper craft, a tea session, a leather class, To He figures and a morning run. Spirits and wine from the room bar are a separate matter and sit on the bill. The Virtuoso benefits are added on top of all of this, so the two stack.
Which restaurants are in the building, and which one has the star?: Backstage on the ground floor is the main room and serves breakfast and northern Vietnamese cooking through the day. Koki holds the Japanese dining, and inside it Hibana by Koki is the teppanyaki counter that carries one Michelin star. The Hudson Rooms is a seafood and grill bistro done as 1920s New York, with Track 61 hidden behind it, and Diva's Lounge is the Art Deco bar for cocktails. Backstage and the Izakaya at Koki have both been listed by Michelin as well.
What exactly comes with the evening ritual?: Champagne and cocktails poured without a tab, canapés brought to the table, and live music in the room. It happens in the Living Room, the lounge by the entrance where guests also check in. There is an afternoon tea earlier in the day in the same room. All of it is part of staying there, and nothing came to the bill.
Are the pool and the spa worth the time?: La Grotta, the indoor pool, is the piece of the hotel I would not skip. It runs long and narrow under a line of lit glass, with green and white marble on the floor and mirrors overhead, and it looks like a set. You are given a drink, crisps and a cold towel when you arrive at it. I walked through Auriga, the spa, and saw the treatment rooms and the hydrotherapy area, and I did not book a treatment, so I cannot tell you how the hands are. If a treatment matters to your stay, book it before you come.