Berlin, Germany

Max Brown Ku'Damm

Price per night from$79.44

Price information

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 (EUR73.43), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Tu’damm cool

Setting

Right by the boulevard

Budget boutique hotel Max Brown Ku’damm, part of Sircle Collection is a shot of colourful cool into the arm of Berlin’s leafy Charlottenburg. Inside, you’ll find copper pipes and exposed ducting muddled with mid-century furniture that’s spun through a bold, bright colour wheel. Hotel restaurant Benedict is similarly non-conformist, flying in the face of tradition by serving devilishly good breakfast. A wurst’s throw from the upmarket Kurfürstendamm boulevard, Max Brown is also close to some of the city's best boutiques; perhaps your room's Saar Zafrir interior will inspire you to hunt down a slice of Berlin design to call your own.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A glass of prosecco for each guest

Facilities

Photos Max Brown Ku'Damm facilities

Need to know

Rooms

81, including five suites.

Check–Out

11am; earliest check-in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £67.33 (€79), including tax at 7 per cent.

More details

Room rates exclude à la carte breakfast at Benedict, the hotel’s all-day breakfast restaurant.

Also

Nearby Kurfürstendamm is one of Berlin’s most famous boulevards. First built by a prince to hasten the journey to his hunting lodge, it was later prettified by 19th-century German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who took an idea or two from Paris’ Champs-Elysées. By the time the 20th century rolled in, the neighbourhood was awash with millionaires, intellectuals and artists. It’s been through a downturn or two since, but it’s firmly on it’s way back up, determined to prove that Berlin’s west is best.

At the hotel

Lounge area with a pool table, a vintage-style gift shop and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: TV, a Crosley record player, tea-making facilities, a fan and Dead Clean bath products.

Our favourite rooms

If you’re on a fleeting visit, then one of the Small Rooms will do you just fine. Sure, their name rings true, but they’ve been stylishly furnished to make the most of the space – and you still get your record player, bath products and all the extras of the larger rooms. If you’re looking for a little more luxury, the Large Rooms are big and bright, with generous bedrooms and living areas with a sofa bed, making them great for trios.

Packing tips

Bring your bike helmet, as Berlin is a very cycle-friendly spot; the streets are wider than many European cities, and most pavements have lanes for those on two wheels. Fat Tire Bike Rentals loan a range of models at competitive prices – there’s a branch right next to Berlin Zoo station (www.fattiretours.com/berlin).

Also

All of the hotel’s public areas are wheelchair accessible.

Pet‐friendly

Pooches under 7kg can stay in some room categories for €15 a pet, each night (up to one in each room), on request and subject to availability. See more pet-friendly hotels in Berlin.

Children

Children of all ages are welcome. Extra beds (€20 a night) can be added to some of the Large rooms; Extra Large rooms have a sofa bed; those aged two or under can share their parents’ for free.

Food and Drink

Photos Max Brown Ku'Damm food and drink

Top Table

If the sun’s shining, take one of the tables outside on the street and watch the city in motion. Inside, there’s a set of half-moon booths up against the far wall, which give you a view across the room and the street outside.

Dress Code

Berlin has an almost city-wide cool-but-casual dress code, and Benedict is no different. Just don’t come down in your dressing gown…

Hotel restaurant

Benedict is a bit of a rule-breaker. Here, breakfast is on the menu all day – and when we say all day, we mean it: this place is open round the clock. A neon sign hangs over the bar, bidding you Guten Morgen even if it’s darkest night. Like the rest of the lobby area, the look is half industrial, with exposed ducting and strips of naked bulbs running across the ceiling, and half organic, with parquet flooring, leafy-green wallpaper and potted plants. All manner of sweet and savoury breakfasts are available, ranging from North African to American to traditional German.

Hotel bar

Benedict's wooden bar is a handsome affair with a strong vintage look to it: the bar and bar back are filled with small metal-handled drawers, giving it the look of 1950’s cabinetry. The drinks selection includes a range of brunch cocktails such as Cinnamotion, a medley of Kraken Black Spiced rum, apple juice, lime and home-made apple and cinnamon jam. There’s never been a better time to discover that cocktails and breakfast make very good bedfellows indeed.

Last orders

Benedict is open between 8am and 11pm.

Location

Photos Max Brown Ku'Damm location
Address
Max Brown Ku'Damm
Uhlandstraße 49
Berlin
10719
Germany

Max Brown Ku’damm sits in the borough of Charlottenburg–Wilmersdorf, a leafy, elegant neighbourhood that’s no stranger to high society.

Planes

Three terminals serve Berlin's Brandenburg Airport, with direct flights from the UK, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and the USA. It's about ten miles south of the city centre and is well served by transport links; take the express train to Berlin Zoo, before transferring to the southbound U9 on the U-Bahn (underground) network. Ride two stops to Spichernstraße.

Trains

Berlin’s vast central station is to the north of the hotel on the other side of Tiergarten park. It’s got excellent connections with stations throughout Germany and its continental neighbours. High-speed ICE trains run on many major routes.

Automobiles

You won’t need a car unless you plan to leave the city for day trips, but if you do want to hire, the Smith24 team can arrange it; call 24 hours a day. To get a taste for the city’s past, you could zoom (well, sort of) around in a hired Trabant, the plastic-bodied motor icon of the east. Citizens of the GDR used to have to wait as long as 18 years to get one, so renting one of these bangers for a day would have seemed like an outrageous luxury (www.trabantberlin.de).

Worth getting out of bed for

An alternative to the traditional art gallery, me Collectors Room is a space for private collectors to exhibit – principally Thomas Olbricht, whose collection is one of the largest in Europe. Sitting alongside the art is the Wunderkammer, Olbricht’s own ‘cabinet of curiosities’, a modern equivalent to the treasure troves compiled by the worldly (and wealthy) during the Renaissance. For a change of scene, head to hip Kreuzberg, which went from being one of West Berlin’s poorest districts to one of its most sought-after today. The darling of the young, creative crowd, it's chock-full of bars, hip coffee houses and restaurants serving multi-cultural cuisine. Try Turkey’s equivalent of the pizza, a lahmacun, which is topped with minced meat, vegetables, herbs and spices. For a smorgasbord of other culinary treats, try Markthalle Neun, a large, covered market brimming with all manner of epicurean-worthy food and drinks. Alongside the boutiques on the Kurfürstendamm itself, you’ve also got the historic KaDeWe department store and BikiniHaus shopping centre within walking distance.

Local restaurants

Knives at the ready, The Butcher awaits your arrival at the Sir Savigny hotel. No, the hotel doesn’t have an in-house psychotic – it’s their aptly named eatery, which specialises in devilishly good Aberdeen Angus burgers. You can see right into the kitchen as they slice and dice, which shows that the men in aprons aren’t worried about having to tell any porkies about what goes on behind the scenes. Fittingly, the look is cool, almost clinical – brushed-steel tables and gleaming white tiles – but the flavours and atmosphere are alive and kicking. For a truly German meal, try Marjellchen, which has been serving Prussian heritage food for years. The portions are hearty, the service is excellent and the owner, Ramona, can tell you some fascinating stories about Cold War era Germany. Try the fillet pot ‘Marjellchen’, a dish of beef and pork fillets served with fried potatoes, assorted vegetables and Béarnaise sauce. Coda's all-dessert dining might seem too much of a sugar-rush, but its tasting menu is clever and playful, with dishes such as eggplant in an apple-balsamic glaze and peach with sweet pepper and yoghurt. All the more reson to skip to the end.

Local cafés

Sat beneath the trees that ring the lake in the Tiergarten, Café am Neuen See is a winner in the summer: the large decked area is a picturesque spot to enjoy a tall beer and thin-base pizza.

Local bars

Canal-side venue Club der Visionäre is centered around a redbrick house and a decked area overhung by a large willow tree. Top-drawer DJs spin on a regular basis, but the dance floor is small and the music fairly quiet, so it’s got quite a laid-back feel compared to some clubs. That said, this is still Berlin, and parties have been known to go on all weekend in the summer. Feeling lucky? Near-mythic club Berghain straddles the border between nearby Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. We can’t guarantee that you’ll actually get in, but if you do, it’ll be a night (or day – its opening hours are famously lengthy) to remember.

Reviews

Photos Max Brown Ku'Damm reviews
Hazel Sheffield

Anonymous review

By Hazel Sheffield, Travelling scribe

You know you've found a great hotel when you can come in from an all-night party in time for breakfast, sit down for a delicious meal and a couple of bloody marys, then slink off to your room to sleep through the rest of the morning without anyone batting an eyelid, or banging on your door.

So it goes at Max Brown Ku’Damm. The hotel, located in upmarket Charlottenburg, is the second German outpost of the Amsterdam-based brand, following an opening in Midtown, Dusseldorf.

Ku’Damm, so named after the nearby shopping avenue of the same name, has already got a name for itself among locals since it opened in December last year. We arrive on Saturday morning to find a crowd of people out the door.

Benedict, the Israeli bakery on the ground floor, has fast become one of the hottest brunch spots in town. Well-heeled West Berliners wait with their coffee and their dogs on the pavement. Inside, opposite a wall cascading with live succulents, a couple play pool. Others lounge in velvet and leather chairs in the lobby, reading the paper. The check-in desk is barely visible, hidden behind shelves of quirky souvenirs, including cacti salt and pepper shakers, boomerangs and soft balls.

After a lightning fast check-in, we’re in our large room on the second floor, dressed in muted hues of blue, grey, yellow and green by Saar Zafrir, an Amsterdam-based designer. White window shutters, oak floors and bright rugs and throws add cosiness to the otherwise simple decor. Filament light bulbs, trailing from the the ceiling, have been artfully affixed to the wall above a jade sofa that flattens into an extra bed.

We are briefly mystified by a basketball hoop attached to the wall above the desk, until we later discover a soft basketball on a shelf above the bed in the adjoining room. It’s way too far away for me to score with my limited sporting abilities, but we have fun trying. On the same set of shelves, a vintage Crosley record player is stacked with three LPs, including a geographically appropriate Baltic Soul Weekender compilation.

The bathroom is visible through an interior window (thankfully, it comes with a blind). Scrumptious Dead Clean products containing argan and salvia oils and a powerful bronze shower make up for the poky space.

While there’s no minibar, Benedict welcomes guests for snacks or steak and chips through the night. Plus, from 5-9pm, you can get two-for-one cocktails – a generous happy hour by anyone's standards.

As we're still some way off cocktail hour, Mr Smith and I slink past the brunch crowd and out to explore Charlottenburg. The wide boulevards and tall, pale apartment blocks in this part of town are remnants of the prosperity of capitalist West Berlin in opposition to the formerly Soviet East.

Aside from shopping and Starbucks, there’s not loads to do in this part of town, so we hop on city’s convenient overground system, the S-bahn, and out to the far east of the city for a music festival called Pure and Crafted in an abandoned power station.

Berlin is awash with these empty industrial buildings and open spaces, making it the perfect city for artists and promoters looking for cheap places to host events. (Pro tip: you’ll find more about these festivals and other listings at Berlin.de.)

Pure and Crafted, mixes music from Interpol and Car Seat Headrest with custom-built motorcycles (it’s sponsored by BMW, after all). The crowd is an unlikely melting pot of handlebar-moustachioed bikers and preppy indie kids, queuing at independent food trailers and drinking beer at picnic tables.

Two clubs, Sisyphos and ://about blank (yes, really), are in the neighbourhood, with line-ups running from Friday to Monday with no break. We try our luck with both and end up in the forests out the back of ://about blank, chatting with locals on soft-covered chairs under the trees. Inside, we dance to techno in the crumbling rooms of this former illegal rave venue until dawn.

Hence the end-of-the-night breakfast at Benedict. Super-strong bloody marys, pots of tea and an endless bread basket are the perfect way to warm up after the journey back from East Berlin. I have the egg balls mostly out of curiosity and receive a steaming bowl of scrambled egg formed into gnocchi-like balls with creamy mushrooms, delivered with a side-salad. Mr Smith tucks into a thick slice of brioche, covered in spinach and cream cheese with two poached eggs in hollandaise sitting atop.

After breakfast among the yuccas, we head up a concrete staircase, neon yellow signs on navy walls leading us to our bedroom. Mr Smith slips a ‘Do not disturb’ sign outside the door just before the housecleaners clatter past. We block out the day with those big white shutters and slip beneath a cloud of duvet and pillows to rest, ready for the night.

 

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Price per night from $79.44