Looking across at the 1909 Nimb palace
And then it was time to check-in properly, to the one-off Nimb Hotel, Copenhagen – the gal had visited it a decade ago and remembered an adjacent dairy but that has now closed. What IS still the same is that Nimb, set into the peripheral Bernstorffsgaade wall of Tivoli Gardens, has evolved from the Moorish palace built in 1909 by architect Knud Arne-Petersen for the city’s top restaurateurs, the Nimb family. What had opened in 2008 as a 17-room hotel has now, since December 2017, been extended, by New York architects Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, into a 39-room luxury property, a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World.
Corner room in the 1909 palace
I was welcomed by former GM, Iben Marburger Juul, and by her successor, Maria Oldenbjerg – see the photo at the top – and shown to suite 28, a 240 sq m beauty in the new block. One long all-glass wall, with 1.5 metre-wide balcony, looked straight down into Tivoli Gardens. Inside, as the video below shows, I had Danish oak floors with a few throw mats and, working to a mostly-blackberry mousse colour scheme, walls enlivened with mirrors and chinoiserie chosen by designer Rene Jasper. Although it was tempting to spend all my time in the suite I headed down to the basement Technogym, which will be moving to a new spa, with hammams, scheduled for later this year.
A library corner
The third floor rooftop of the new block has a splendid outdoor pool, with lots of deck seating around, and a leased-out sushi bar. I discovered a cosy library nook but I had plenty of reading, anyway. I decided to dine in my room, starting with the signature 1909 cocktail – a Perrier-Jouët coupe holding Jensen’s Old Tom Gin, St Germain elderflower liqueur, fresh lemon juice, clover bitters and sage leaves. This went beautifully with the Nimb beef tartare, served with lettuce salad and superb skin-on fries. Olive oil and mayonnaise and tomato sauce all came in individual Weck glass jars, with lids, and the still-warm brown bread roll was in a paper-lined metal dish.
On a Nimb bike
Room service dinner presentation should be a quality assessment factor for any luxury hotel and Nimb certainly excelled, with crisp white linens, a rose presented with sage leaves, Royal Copenhagen china paired with Arthur Kropp cutlery and C&S glasses, and plain brown wood Peugeot mills. Of course I had iced water, in a cut-glass glass, and wine presented, in the bottle, before a glass is poured. This attention to detail was to be repeated at breakfast, in the indoor-out Brasserie that literally flows out into Tivoli Gardens, though a lot of plants seem to have found their way to the inside of the restaurant, too. And soon I would be taking one of this unforgettable hotel’s Velorbis bikes for a spin around town. AND NOW SEE SUITE 28
