The Place
A pleasant hotel garni in the south of Weimar, the Villa Hentzel is close to the summer residence of Franz Liszt and the park that meanders along the banks of the Ilm River. The hotel is a small but imposing neoclassical villa built in 1873. The Austrian educationalist Rudolf Steiner lived here for a year, and the helpful and rather formal Frau Hentzel will reel off a list of other luminaries who have resided here in past times. No doubt the list is growing, since this comfortable hotel has been popular with students from western Germany and abroad since its renovation and conversion to a hotel in 1996.
Inside, original plaster ceilings, dadoes and arches remain, while the rooms have been sensitively modernized. Many of the double bedrooms are large and high-ceilinged and all are attractively decorated, some with patterened fabrics, some in shades of aqua, peach or blue. Two have French windows opening on to balconies supported by neoclassical columns, which overlook the street front. Others have pleasant views of the garden and the streets and houses of old Weimar.
In other senses, this is a fairly basic hotel garni – there is no cafe, no Stube, or Biergarten where guests can meet and chat, just the cheerful breakfast room in the mornings, and, in warm weather, the terrace outside.