Hotel Greulich

Class: First

Style: Minimalist

Rooms: 28

Zurich may still mostly be known as a banking capital, a grown-up town, long on old money and short on youthful exuberance. When you’re talking about Zurich West, however, none of the old stereotypes apply. Here, and in the neighboring Langstrasse (the city’s vice district), you’ll find more nightclubs and fashion boutiques than boardrooms and bank vaults — and while it may not exactly be Prenzlauer Berg or Berlin-Mitte, it’s surprisingly not far off.

Here, tucked into a quiet residential neighborhood, sandwiched between the Langstrasse and Zurich West, is the Greulich, a small and intimate modern design hotel of the sort that Zurich, until recently, was sorely lacking. This Seventies commercial building has been redesigned into the very model of the modern minimal boutique, complete with soothing monochrome guest rooms (designed by the Swiss painter Jean Pfaff) and a central courtyard planted with birch trees, perhaps the Swiss answer to the Japanese Zen garden. The atmosphere throughout the hotel, however stylish, is more urban-oasis than velvet-rope — in a departure from the design-hotel norm, the Greulich’s centerpiece is not a scene-making nightclub but a restaurant, overseen by a Spanish chef and a menu steeped in the philosophy of Slow Food.