Detailed Review
In the heart of downtown Florence, in Piazza Santa Maria Novella, just a few steps from the Renaissance church bearing the same name, a rare, extraordinary island in the sea of life can be found. JK Place, an absolutely special hotel experience, is hidden away behind a charming door. An elegant habitat that joins atmosphere with scents from the past while at the same time offering precise and decidedly contemporary comfort, JK Place follows a philosophy of hospitality that is truly different, tracing a peculiar microcosm, far from overused clichés and evening routes.
A real house, with fireplaces aglow, meaningful contemporary flavours and objects deposited over time, with its overlay of happy memories and a soft approach, refined, attentive but never invasive. A long corridor with black wooden flooring gives a sense of unity to the different common areas of the ground floor.
Exquisitely masculine, British hints, rarefied décor, an understated display, calm and luxurious. There are only 20 rooms. It is immediately clear that this place could never be ordinary, as the sounds of the city fade away and a slower, more thoughtful rhythm prevails.
Independent Reviews
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"This elegant design hotel just north of the Arno mixes museum-like features with a cool, contemporary design and a great lounge bar."
TI's top choice of the design hotels in Florence, JK Place is a triumph of elegance and cool modernity. Excellent, knowledgeable service, too.
JK Place
By Jamie Dunford Wood
JK Place is one of the newest additions to the Florence hotel scene, a 20 room boutiqe in the charming but slightly off-central square of Santa Maria Novella. It has been created by the same architect who worked on the Ferragamo hotels, and the effect is a triumph of elegance and cool, modern eclecticism. However, this is an intimate hotel, and most of the rooms are not large, so if you are not in love nest mood and want slightly more anonymity, mixing with record producers for breakfast on the same table might not be your idea of fun.
Reception is a small sitting room and a 2nd, TV relaxing room, scattered with Chinese prints and other drawings on the walls and propped on the floor like an overflowing art gallery, a mix of antique and contemporary. Walls are of cool grey stone, the floors dark wood, a modern echo of Renaissance Florence. The classic and superior rooms are in love-nest mode, small, often shower only, but some with flour posters, and all with complimentary soft drink minibars, flatscreen TVs and DVD. Decor is cream, with grey/taupe fabrics, Rocco Forte style. Rooms with interior courtyard views are dark. For larger rooms, Kings are best, and for separate showers book a junior suite, which also has a private terrace. The largest room, the Master Room, overlooks the church of Santa Maria Novella, while from the duplex penthouse suite you get a view of the Duomo. There is a small rooftop terrace with a long lounge bed, romantic at night, decked like a boat.
Downstairs again there is a small covered courtyard dining room for breakfast and an all-day light buffet.
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Client Reviews
We had a wonderful time in
Ratings
- Comfort:
(5/5) - Character: (5/5)
- Location:
(4/5)
Posted by Sally Capper on 2006-02-16.
