Few sites have borne witness to Amsterdam’s history as intimately as Prinsengracht 436. The landmark building, built in 1663, was an orphanage before it was converted into the city’s Palace of Justice in the 1880s. In 2025, after more than a decade-long restoration, the courthouse entered a new chapter in its history: as a Rosewood Hotel.
The Hong Kong-headquartered hospitality group has built a reputation by privileging local history and customs—in the form of design gestures, choice of materials, menu inclusions, and art curation—of the culture into which each hotel is embedded. The Rosewood Amsterdam is no different: situated in the city’s UNESCO world heritage-listed canal district, its design maintains the Palace of Justice’s authoritative aesthetic with stately granite columns and wide sonorous corridors, painstakingly restored wood panelling (adorning the walls of some of the hotel’s suites), and elaborate molding (spied in the three restaurants: Eeuwen, Advocatuur, and The Court). This commitment to amplifying a location’s legacy is echoed in the ethos of Studio Piet Boon, the Dutch design group tapped to preside over the interior restoration, making sleek additions in the form of an underground spa and in-room amenities. The result? An immersive property that balances the gravitas of the old with the levity of the new.
The hotel’s art program is key in this effort. Curated by Kunstmest Consulting, the collection contains over 1,000 artworks intended to spark contrasts between the city’s artistic past and present (highlights include a Casper Braa vending machine, one of the artist’s consumerist parodies that dispenses small limited-release artworks; and a large screen bearing a rotation of video works curated in collaboration with Nxt Museum, both in the lobby).
Outdoors, the Dutch landscape architect Piet Oudolf, whose signature native plant arrays (see: the grassy expanses of the High Line in New York and meadowy installation at Calder Gardens in Philadelphia), designed a courtyard garden that can be glimpsed from every floor. Engineered to evolve as the seasons change, the garden embodies Oudolf’s perennial-heavy approach to indigenous plantlife, setting a pensive mood for visitors venturing down to the subterranean Asaya Spa, an ambient space featuring saunas, a pool, and a gym. For travelers looking to immerse themselves in centuries’ worth of Dutch history, the Rosewood Amsterdam is the destination of choice.
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