Stockholm, Sweden

Miss Clara

Price per night from$125.33

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 (SEK1,332.59), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Artfully refashioned retro

Setting

Super-trendy Sveavägen

Named after a beloved, boundary-pushing headmistress, Miss Clara boutique hotel – in central Stockholm – began life as a girl’s school when it was built in 1910. Architect Gert Wingårdh’s firm preserved many of its dainty art nouveau features in its tasteful remodeling, but these days you’re more likely to study the retro bar’s cocktails or the brasserie’s Nordic menu than a textbook. Cast thoughts of Catholic schoolgirl uniforms from your mind – this Miss’s serenely simple rooms and eye-catching artwork make it one hell of a class act.

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A selection of Swedish sweets

Facilities

Photos Miss Clara facilities

Need to know

Rooms

92, including four suites.

Check–Out

Noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 2pm, but guests can stow their luggage before this time.

Prices

Double rooms from £111.18 (SEK1,493), including tax at 12 per cent.

More details

A buffet breakfast with hotel’s own-recipe sausages, waffles, home-made breads, cakes, granola and jam is SEK265 a person (SEK175 for under-12s).

Also

All public areas are wheelchair-accessible, and there are disabled-access rooms on the first five floors of the hotel.

At the hotel

Sauna, gym, free WiFi throughout. In rooms: flatscreen TV with built-in entertainment system, minibar and Orla Kiely bath products.

Our favourite rooms

We love the hotel’s Superior Rooms, which overlook the pretty church and garden at the corner of Sveavägen and Adolf Fredriks Church Street. Parquet tiles, soft organic fabrics and a few retro fittings liven up the rooms’ monochrome decor. Honeymooners should book one of the two elegant and spacious Etage Suites; converted prayer halls with a cosy mezzanine-level bedroom nook that’s set for far less pious shenanigans.

Spa

Packing tips

Decadent duds and a digital SLR – packed in a large cracked-leather satchel, naturally.

Also

Architecture firm Wingårdhs, who gave the hotel its tasteful facelift, are the creative geniuses behind hip Swedish shops Ease and Emporia, the thatch-covered visitor’s centre at lake Tåkern and Spira cultural centre. There is no in-room air conditioning.

Children

All ages welcome, but the hotel has sparse baby kit – aside from cots and highchairs – so pack anything you’ll need. Babysitting is available for SEK475 an hour (a minimum of three hours is required), must be booked four days in advance.

Sustainability efforts

The restaurant uses seasonal, organic, exclusively Scandinavian produce (or carefully chosen imported ingredients, if there’s been a poor harvest). Most rooms are lit by low-energy LED lights, and waste is recycled where possible.

Food and Drink

Photos Miss Clara food and drink

Top Table

Spy on the stylish Swedes ambling along Sveavägen from a window seat.

Dress Code

A Schiaperelli-esque floor-sweeping dress as a nod to the pre-war setting, or a clean-cut COS ensemble with a string of pearls – and nothing scruffier than chinos for Mr Smith.

Hotel restaurant

Chef Daniel Guest (formerly at the Connaught in London) has crafted a brasserie-style menu with indulgent fare, such as lobster-cream soup with a cheese pie, and steak tartare with truffle caviar and parmesan. Art nouveau grandeur permeates the dining room: leather banquettes, vaulted windows and cut-crystal glassware sets an upper-crust scene, but arch updates – industrial-chic, factory-style lights with repurposed-decanter shades – ensure it’s far from stuffy. The chef can adapt meals for health-conscious – or dairy and gluten-avoiding – guests. The Ballerina Room café has Max Modén’s ballerina portraits, Kaare Klint seating and a selection of well-thumbed Swedish and English tomes to flip through. 

Hotel bar

Mixologists Joel Constantino and Robert Radovic are a dab hand with surprising spirit blends – served up in a space as on-trend ornate as the dining room. We love their signature drink, the decadently dry Rob Rad (scotch, Punt e Mes, Heering and absinthe), but we’ll happily substitute it for a quirky ‘beer cocktail’ or a grown-up-slushy-style, flavoured-ice concoction.

Last orders

Breakfast is from 6.30am to 10am, 8am to 11am on weekends. The restaurant opens until 10pm Monday to Saturday, and from noon to 5pm on Sundays. Drinks at the bar flow until 1am from Wednesday to Saturday, 11pm from Sunday to Tuesday.

Room service

During restaurant hours, you can enjoy the full à la carte in the comfort of your room, and alcoholic drinks can be delivered while the bar’s still buzzing. A more modest menu and soft drinks are served after hours.

Location

Photos Miss Clara location
Address
Miss Clara
Sveavägen 48
Stockholm
111 34
Sweden

Miss Clara sits on Sveavägen, a main street in Stockholm – lined with grand art nouveau buildings, shops and restaurants – a 20-minute walk from the city’s old town Gamla Stan and a 15-minute taxi ride from museum-filled Djurgården island.

Planes

Arlanda International Airport (www.swedavia.se/arlanda), a 40-minute drive away, is closest to the hotel. There are direct flights from major European cities; flights from the US connect via Oslo or Sheremetyevo International; and flights across the Pacific arrive via Beijing, or Abu Dhabi and Berlin. Taxis charge a fixed rate of SEK520.

Trains

From the airport, the Arlanda Express train takes just 20 minutes to arrive in central Stockholm. When you reach subway stop Hötorget, take the staircase to Olof Palmes street; the hotel’s a 100-metre walk from there.

Automobiles

For a short city break, it’s unlikely you’ll need a car – most landmarks are within walking distance, and Stockholm is best explored on foot. However, if you’re staying longer four wheels will come in handy for exploring the islands and countryside beyond the city limits. There’s a waiting zone outside the hotel on Sveavägen street, where you can drop off your luggage, and valet parking is SEK495 a day.

Worth getting out of bed for

At one end of Sveavägen lies Sergel’s Square, a public space with a unique mosaic floor, at the other, Haga Park, a popular socialising spot with a butterfly house and a small museum – and in between are some of the city’s hippest shops, bars and eateries. Pick up some Nordic style essentials in designer-shop-thronged malls NK at Hamngatan, and MOOD Stockholm at Regeringsgatan. Afterwards, stroll down to the Old Town, the city’s mediaeval quarter, a 20-minute walk from Miss Clara. Tour the lavishly gilded reception rooms of the official residence of Sweden’s monarchy, the grand 18th-century Stockholm Palace, then explore the antique taverns and begging-to-be-explored historic alleyways nearby. Just south of the palace is tribute to formidable yet inspiring achievements, the Nobel Museum. The awards ceremony is held on 10 December, so keep your eyes peeled for famed geniuses if visiting then. Alternatively, the perky pop songs and scandalously tight costumery of ABBA The Museum – in the Södermalm district – are fun guilty pleasures. Head to the Vasa Museum on Djurgården island, to see a remarkably well-preserved, sculpture-clad, 17th-century warship. Open-air museum and zoo Skansen is close by, where more than 150 historic houses – from turf abodes to mansions – have been recreated; wolverines, bears and moose strut about its zoo, too. If you have a day to spare, visit 17th-century Drottningholm Palace – a Unesco World Heritage Site with magnificent gardens and a theatre. Or see the city by Stromma Hop-on – Hop-Off Boat tours.

Local restaurants

At Smak, a five-minute walk from the hotel – you order a selection of flavours rather than a starter, main course and dessert: ‘Tea’ is infused into duck with hazelnut and pumpkin, and ‘Cardamom’ is sprinkled over French toast. Each dish has an ideal wine pairing too. If you like to see the machinations behind your meal, there’s a very open kitchen at Rolf’s Kök – a 10-minute walk from the hotel. The French and Spanish-influenced menu will undoubtedly satisfy, but the chefs welcome any recipe-tweaking suggestions. Grill, on Drottninggatan, is delightfully absurd – shark sculptures swim over the bar, palm trees sprout through the floor and diners sit at opera-box-style tables.

Local cafés

Music is the main attraction at Glen Miller Café, with three performances each night, but the food doesn’t play second fiddle; the Francophile-pleasing menu has moules-frites, lobster and charcuterie platters. With its exposed brickwork, large windows and pops of bright colour, Café Pascal is an immensely stylish spot for a fika (coffee and cake) stop.

Local bars

The punnily named Gold Bar at Nobis Hotel – Miss Clara’s sister property – does indeed have a touch of Midas about it; however clean minimalist lines and a strictly black and gold palette save it from an overdose of bling. Its list of classic cocktails comes served up in jam jars, teacups and such, and the crowd’s formed of sleekly dressed Swedes. A little less sleek, but no less fun is Pub Anchor, Stockholm’s oldest and most-beloved live-rock venue. In addition to gigs seven days a week, this pseudo-divey, dimly-lit bar offers more than 70 different kinds of bottled beer.

Reviews

Photos Miss Clara reviews

Anonymous review

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 their vintage-chic boutique hotel in Stockholm and unpacked their trendsetting Scandi threads and pralines from hip chocolatier Robert E’s, a full account of their luxury city break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a scrawled note torn from a schoolbook, confiscated at Miss Clara…

If you want to duck behind a bike shed at the thought of going back to school, former all-girls' academy turned boutique hotel Miss Clara (named for glass-ceiling-nudging headmistress Clara Strömberg) will be an educational experience. On entering, the disarmingly gorgeous staff – primed for an impromptu lumberjack-themed Swedish Vogue shoot – are faultlessly welcoming, and the retro interiors feel cosily nostalgic. Flirty feminine touches – Max Moden’s graceful ballet portraits, virginal white linens and soft organic fabrics – and a low-lit, glad-rags-recommended bar are inherently romantic; and there are proliferating svelte-Swede-crowded hangouts in the hotel’s Norrmalm locale. Strömberg would undoubtedly give architect firm Wingårdhs an A+ for leapfrogging Stockholm’s lofty coolness yardstick while honouring the hotel’s history; best to book a room before Wes Anderson starts shooting there…

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Price per night from $125.33