Palermo Hollywood

Home Hotel Buenos Aires

★★★★★

Home is the hotel that put Palermo Hollywood on the boutique map. When it opened, it was the first boutique hotel in the area, and it has stayed a favourite with design-minded travellers, music and film people and returning visitors ever since, thanks to an easygoing, sociable atmosphere that makes it feel more like a stylish friend's house than a hotel. It stands on Calle Honduras in the heart of Palermo Hollywood, the part of the vast Palermo district north of the railway tracks that took its name from the television and film studios once based here and is now packed with restaurants, wine bars, cocktail bars and cafés. Behind a modest street front, the hotel opens onto its best feature: a deep, green garden with a swimming pool, loungers and outdoor tables, a rare oasis in a dense city neighbourhood and the setting for breakfast, lazy afternoons and evening drinks. The rooms come in several categories, from compact standard rooms to superior rooms with garden or city views, suites, a garden suite and poolside suites that open almost directly onto the water. They are decorated in a warm mid-century and retro style, with vintage wallpapers, wooden floors, good beds and thoughtful details, and some have balconies or terraces. A small spa offers massages, facials and day-spa treatments, and the bar, with its cocktail list and DJ evenings, attracts locals as well as guests, which keeps the place lively without being raucous. Breakfast is served in the restaurant and garden, with fresh bread, local cheeses, fruit and good coffee.

Who it suits: couples, creative travellers and anyone who wants to live like a local in the most dynamic part of the city, with dinner and drinks a short walk away. Palermo Hollywood and neighbouring Palermo Soho are the centre of the city's restaurant scene, from celebrated parrillas to tasting menus, natural wine bars and speakeasies, and the Palermo parks, the Rosedal and the Japanese Garden are a twenty-minute walk away. It is less convenient for the historic centre, San Telmo and La Boca, which are a twenty- to thirty-minute taxi or subway ride, and the neighbourhood is livelier at night, so light sleepers should ask for a garden-facing room.

Living in it: if your budget allows, book a poolside or garden suite, as the garden is the soul of the hotel. Otherwise, a superior room with a garden view gives you the best of the atmosphere. Spend at least one late afternoon by the pool before heading out for dinner at ten, as porteños do, and ask the staff for their current neighbourhood favourites, which change quickly in Palermo. Book spa treatments in advance, as the spa is small.

Value: rates sit in the upper-middle range for Buenos Aires, typically well below the big luxury hotels, and the combination of a pool, a garden and a top location in Palermo makes it very good value. Foreign guests paying with a foreign card are generally exempt from VAT on accommodation. For a stylish, sociable base with a real sense of place, it remains one of the best boutique hotels in the city.