If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR220.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
In a past life (dating back to 1039), Fink Restaurant & Suites, in Brixen’s old town, served as a monastery, so it’s no stranger to people singing praises. It has been a post office, coppersmiths, coffee shop, inn and butchers since then – with the latter proprietor’s family still at the helm – but we’re warming up our vocals again to belt out its graces: a modishly monk-ish pared-back look, restored original features, inventive Alpine cuisine, and a spa sanctuary. And, not content with the hotel’s Lazarus-like restoration, its miracle-worker owners are now devoted to running the place in eco-friendly style, too.
Smith Extra
Get this when you book through us:
A bottle of sparkling South Tyrolean wine on arrival and a sachet of the monastery’s herb salt to take home
11am, but flexible, subject to availability and a charge. Earliest check-in, 2pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £207.24 (€242), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €2.30 per person per night on check-out.
More details
Rates include a breakfast with homemade bread, organic coffee, teas and juices, and South Tyrolean treats, plus à la carte courses; and guests get a BrixenCard for accessing museums, cable-cars and public transport. A two-night minimum stay is required.
Also
Unfortunately, due to the hotel’s historic layout the hotel isn’t accessible.
At the hotel
Spa with a sauna, steam room and Roman bath; and free WiFi. In rooms: TV, minibar, air-conditioning, and organic herbal bath products.
Our favourite rooms
It takes skill to ensure the monk’s cell look is more sophisticated than spartan, and Fink have nailed it. Simple Scandi-esque furnishings, wood flooring and white walls, and vow-of-silence hues are given wings with the original wood doors and architectural intrigues – and some original frescoes in the larger Arcus Suites.
Poolside
There’s no swimmable pool onsite, but guests get three hours of free access a day at the Acquarena pool complex (around a 10-minute walk away).
Spa
At Fink’s spa, benedictions come in the form of fragrant herbal steams, healing hot-cold soaks in a Roman bath under a skylight, and sauna soothing. The spa lies behind an old wooden door, and spreads out across the tranquil, leafy inner courtyard and stone vaults.
Packing tips
Holster your hymnals, but do bring books for peaceful time-outs, a swimsuit for spa soaking and an adventurous spirit, both for heading out into the wilds and trying the restaurant’s more unique dishes.
Also
The hotel has a huge digital library guests can access, with thousands of books, newspapers and magazines.
While children can stay, the hotel’s pared-back beauty may be lost on them, and there are no distractions or facilities for little ones at Fink.
Sustainability efforts
Co-owner and chef Florian Fink works with local, traceable suppliers to make the kitchen sustainable, so much so, the restaurant is certified by EarthCheck, which monitors eco-friendly tourism. And any remaining food that’s still good at the end of the day is donated to a local charity. Fink grew up in the hotel where his parents taught him how to tend to the monastery garden and use age-old techniques (pickling, fermenting and more). The building arches, oriel windows, frescoes and stonework have been beautifully preserved and the humble modern decor (all crafted using eco-friendly materials) chimes well with the hotel’s original features. Lime- and quartz-based paints and plaster, recycled wood (even for screws and dowels) and natural insulation were used in the renovation. The building runs on fully green hydro-electricity, uses district heating which runs on wood, and an energy-optimised water cycle helps to keep the Roman bath and underfloor heating hot (or cool in summer).
In the atmospheric vaulted dining room, all tables are equal.
Dress Code
The habit of a habitué.
Hotel restaurant
What did 15th-century South Tyrolean monks eat, you might wonder? Well, let Fink’s chef Florien Fink enlighten you with a menu that religiously follows traditional techniques and presentations, worshipping locally grown vegetables, fruits and herbs. Fink uses the whole of any ingredient (from reliable, local sources such as Kapuzinergarten park, monasteries and organic farms) to cut down on waste, and creates dishes defined by their elegant simplicity: tomato cream soup swirled with pesto made using catchfly plants and dotted with Alpine blossoms; ravioli stuffed with chard, nettle, wild spinach and mountain cheese; carrot cooked in almond cream with polenta; and, for dessert, spelt pancakes with dandelion syrup, or fermented pine cone with mint sorbet. (There’s schnitzel and goulash too, for good measure.) Take a leap of faith – you’ll soon be a believer. And breakfast (buckwheat pancakes in lentil cream, eggs with speck, tomato with hay-milk mozzarella and nettle, amaranth with fruit and dandelion syrup) is served in the Arcade restaurant and out under the arcade facing the street too.
Hotel bar
There's no bar onsite, but in the restaurant, you can sample regional beers, wines, sekts and spumantes.
Last orders
Breakfast is served from 7.30am until 10am, and Fink restaurant opens from noon to 9pm Tuesday to Saturday (closed on Mondays and Sundays).
Fink Restaurant & Suites is a townhouse tucked into the arcades of South Tyrolean town Brixen’s (or Bressanone) old quarter, in what’s nicknamed the ‘blue alley’, but is more multicoloured. And beyond are mighty massifs and spectacular natural parks.
Planes
The closest airport is Bolzano, around a 40-minute drive away, which has a limited number of direct routes through central and southern Europe. Innsbruck is a 90-minute drive, but is better connected; or you could touch down at Verona (two hours away by car) or Munich (just over three hours away). Transfers can be arranged for up to six guests (prices vary).
Trains
Brixen/Bressanone train station is a 10-minute walk away, which has direct links to Bolzano, Innsbruck, Verona, and beyond.
Automobiles
The hotel’s location in the old town is fully pedestrianised (we’re not sure you could squeeze a car through its street), but they can arrange parking in their private garage at 10 Kreuzgasse, a 200-metre walk away for €15 a day. You may need one for navigating the mountain passes.
Other
Bikes can be stored in the hotel’s garage for free.
Worth getting out of bed for
Winter stays at Fink Restaurant & Suites come with skiing and snowboarding at Plose resort, which has 41 kilometres of piste trails, plus a toboggan run and Funpark for freestylers. The cable-car station is about 10 minutes outside town (the hotel will give you a pass to ride it for free). But, you should also carve some time out of your trip to explore Brixen (its German name) or Bressanone (in Italian). The area surrounding the hotel, the old town, is especially charming for its brightly coloured townhouses, arcades lined with shops and cafés, and whimsical frescoes (don’t judge the artists of old for trying to paint an elephant when they hadn’t really seen one…). And Fink wasn’t the only place of religious significance – the Baroque cathedral with its Murano-glass chandeliers, the colourfully Romanesque Chiostro di Bressanone cloisters, the Bishop’s Palace with its botanical garden, and the suitably pallid Gothic White Tower made this quite the pious place. The hotel can help with (charged) bike hire for pootling about (parts of the city are car-free) and wheeling alongside the Isarco River. If you prefer your pedalling with more grit and gradient, there are mountain-biking trails into the foothills, too. The Diocesan Museum has bygone artworks, the Pharmacy Museum has some intriguing vintage tableaux, and each year in May, the city is magically illuminated for the Waterlight Festival.
Local restaurants
Honing in on specialities such as Alpine cheeses, honey, herbs, chestnuts, and an array of fresh produce, South Tyrol’s gastronomy is yodel-icious. In Brixen, Vitis is a cool modern wine bar, but you’ll want to line your stomach first with miso-marinated tuna tataki, Mangalica pork with artichoke and porcini, or paprika-dusted short rib with chorizo. Finsterwirt has a very welcoming dining space with glass made from bottle heels and colourful crests, antique Alpine chairs, and warm-wood panelling. Here gnocchi is ladled with silky Alpine fonduta; creamy white-wine soup is sprinkled with cinnamon; and veal comes with mustard, praline and slugs of sherry. In Traubenwirt’s beamed dining room, you can enjoy regional dishes such as consommé with local speck and liver dumplings; thyme tagliatelle with mountain mushrooms, sausage and smoked curd cheese; and fillet steak and rösti – plus hefty plum dumplings for dessert.
Local cafés
The family that runs Pupp Café have honed their baking and ice-cream-making skills over generations.
Local bars
Weingalerie follows a similar aesthetic to Fink, with its rugged stone walls and sleek modern furnishings: it’s an excellent spot for getting acquainted with South Tyrolean wines, with bottles from notable vineyards in the region. For cocktails, La Habana liberally sloshes rum about (and has a cigar selection if you want to go full Castro) – and if you overdo it, it also does a fine line in breakfast pastries and coffee.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this monk-ishly minimalist hotel in Brixen and unpacked their mountain cheeses and meadow-flower honey, a full account of their truly-blessed ski or walking break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Fink Restaurant & Suites in South Tyrol…
*Bows head* Our father, who art in heaven, give us this day a hotel with a heavenly sense of minimalist style, which holds environmental practices sacred, and dishes out daily bread (made from ancient grains) and haute Alpine cuisine – deliver us to its sauna and Roman baths, and lead us into temptation. The answer to your prayers is Fink Restaurant & Suites hotel in Brixen, a former monastery whose mantle has been taken up by the next generation of the Fink family, who ran it as an inn and butcher shop in the 19th century, bringing handed-down culinary and wellness know-how, and keeping one of Brixen old town’s charming buildings in fine shape. The original trappings – heavy wood doors, stone arches, oriel windows, colourful frescoes – keep the past echoing, but clean, simple furnishings modernise the place just-so. With the diminutive resort of Plose nearby, you can dip into the Dolomites’ winter delights or hike and bike your way through summer from your basecamp while also worshipping at the altar of Alpine culture. Amen.
