The Peninsula Shanghai

The Bund explains Shanghai better than any museum, and the hotel takes its place on the row at No. 32. The building answers the setting in kind, with Art Deco lines outside and, in The Lobby, celadon and ivory, a room built for tea and for conversations that overrun.

The river does the rest. Garden and river categories give a stay two quite different characters, and the Palace Suite adds a living room and a terrace facing Pudong, where the city keeps its other century. Dinner can be taken on the upper floors at Sir Elly’s, whose kitchen is Northern Italian, or in the Art Deco rooms of Yi Long Court, where the cooking is Cantonese. Either way the Huangpu carries the evening, first in daylight, then in the full electrical display of the far bank.

The Bund at No. 32

The address puts the waterfront into the daily routine rather than the itinerary. The same stretch of river reads differently through the day: purposeful in the morning, when the promenade belongs to the city, and theatrical after dark, when Pudong switches itself on across the water. Shanghai’s two centuries face each other here, and the hotel sits deliberately on the older side of the argument, looking across at the newer one.

Garden rooms and river rooms

The choice of category matters more here than the count of square metres. Garden rooms turn inward and stay quiet. River rooms give the Huangpu and the towers beyond it, an outlook that changes hour by hour and never entirely settles. Art Deco detailing runs through both, in the joinery, the lacquer and the lighting, so the interiors read as a continuation of the façade rather than a change of subject. The Palace Suite takes the idea as far as a private terrace.

Two dining rooms, two centuries

Sir Elly’s sits high in the building with a Northern Italian kitchen and the river beneath it, a combination that sounds unlikely and works because the room is confident about both halves of it. Yi Long Court stays at the Art Deco heart of the hotel, its interiors modelled on the Shanghai houses of the period and its Cantonese cooking held to the same standard. The Lobby handles the hours between, in celadon and ivory, with tea and the slow business of an afternoon.