The Beverly Hills Hotel - Dorchester Collection ★★★★★

The Pink Palace That Arrived Before the City Did

The hotel opened in 1912, before Beverly Hills was a city, and the town grew up around it rather than the other way round. What you see from Sunset Boulevard is a long pink facade under green awnings, set well back behind palms and lawn, with a drive that curves up to the door. Inside, the signature is the Martinique banana leaf print, drawn in 1942 and hung here in the renovation of 1949, copied a thousand times since and still best in the room it was made for. The scale is unusual for a city hotel: gardens, paths, a pool terrace, and a line of bungalows tucked behind the main house.

Why It Works

Continuity is the reason. Most hotels of this age have been reinvented until nothing original survives; here the Polo Lounge is still the Polo Lounge, the Fountain Coffee Room still has its counter and its stools, and the pink and green have never been talked out of the building. Around that, Dorchester Collection runs the kind of service that anticipates rather than responds. The result is a landmark you can actually stay in, where the history is in the fabric of the place rather than in a framed photograph by the lift.

Why This Location

9641 Sunset sits on the northern edge of Beverly Hills, where the flats give way to the canyons and Bel Air begins. Rodeo Drive and the shopping streets are a short drive south, Hollywood is east along Sunset, and the Getty Center and the coast are west. This is not a walking address, and the hotel does not pretend otherwise: the compensation is quiet, gardens and a set back from the boulevard that most Los Angeles hotels cannot offer. Plan on a car, or on the house one.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxury

• Vibe: pink stucco, banana leaf, old Hollywood, garden calm

• Rooms: 210 rooms and suites, plus the garden bungalows with their own entrances

• Best For: a first stay in Los Angeles, anniversaries, anyone who books a hotel for its history

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the counter at the Fountain Coffee Room, serving since 1949

• Dining: the Polo Lounge from breakfast to dinner, the Cabana Cafe beside the pool, the Fountain Coffee Room for a stool and a sundae

• Amenities: outdoor pool reserved for hotel guests, spa, gym open around the clock, gardens, bungalows

• Attractions: Rodeo Drive, Greystone Mansion, the Getty Center, Hollywood, all a short drive away

Bungalows, Suites, and the Rooms in Between

The accommodation divides into the main house and the garden. Rooms and suites in the house look over the pool, the gardens or the hills, and they carry the hotel's palette without turning it into a theme. The bungalows are the reason people book a year out: separate buildings reached by garden path, several with their own terrace, kitchen or private entrance, and a degree of privacy that no corridor can match. If a stay is a celebration, the bungalows are where the money goes.

Breakfast at the Counter, Dinner in the Booths

The Fountain Coffee Room seats a couple of dozen people at a curved counter and has done since 1949; breakfast there is the most enjoyable half hour on the property. The Polo Lounge works differently, a green banquette room that has been the industry's breakfast and dinner table for decades, with a patio under a fig tree for the warm months. The Cabana Cafe handles lunch by the pool. Between the three, there is little reason to get back in the car before evening.

Before You Book

The pool is for hotel guests, which is what keeps it usable. Bungalows and the best suites go early, particularly around awards season and the spring. Ask for a room away from the Sunset side if street noise matters to you, and expect the drive up to be part of the arrival rather than a formality.