The building came first. A 1920s heritage pile at 27 O’Connell Street, once home to newspaper offices, gives this hotel its sandstone presence and a marble lobby with genuine hush, three blocks from Wynyard station and about ten minutes on foot from Circular Quay. Among the CBD’s glass towers it reads as an institution, and it behaves like one.
The 364 rooms are classically cut rather than fashionable: heavy curtains, marble bathrooms, real wardrobes and, in the atrium-facing rooms, some of the quietest sleep in central Sydney. One correction to the listings floating around: the pool is a heated indoor lap pool with sauna and steam room alongside, and there is no rooftop pool. What you lose in photographs you gain at 6am, when you will likely have it to yourself.
Bentley Restaurant and Bar at street level is the headline, one of the city’s serious dining rooms, in the building. The hotel’s own brasserie and bar handle the everyday competently. Book it for heritage quiet and a bankable address; book the harbourfront if you need the Opera House filling your window, and pay the difference knowingly. Rates swing with the CBD’s conference calendar, and weekends are the value window, when the suits go home and the harbour is a ten-minute stroll away.
