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 (ILS3,300.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
R48 Hotel and Garden’s simple name belies its pedigree and the vast amount of work that’s gone into it. A project 10 years in the making, a collaboration between billionaire philanthropists and Tel Aviv’s hottest hospitality group R2M, and an important 1933 Bauhaus building in the White City with gardens styled by Piet Oudolf (of NYC’s High Line fame) and very sought-after restaurant seats: it’s big-deal stuff. The clean lines and curved balconies of the original structure, new glass-box suites, a rooftop pool and astounding city panoramas confirm it. However, with just 11 rooms, staff who’ll fawn over you and a home-y feel (albeit a home dressed with Studio Liaigre furnishings and superior tech), it feels intimate and welcoming, too.
Noon. Earliest check-in, 3pm. Both are flexible, subject to availability (charges may apply).
Prices
Double rooms from £690.80 (ILS3,300).
More details
Rates include an à la carte breakfast and welcome soft drink or glass of wine and snacks in your room: sandwiches, tartlets, olives and crudités. And at turndown each night guests get a different nightcap (vermouth, cognac…) and chocolate pralines.
Also
The hotel has a huge glass elevator (with street access) to all floors and some rooms are adapted for guests with mobility issues.
At the hotel
Garden terraces, roof deck, gym, free-to-hire bikes, charged dry-cleaning service, and free WiFi. In rooms: TV, iPad to control room features, Sjostrand coffee-maker, tea-making kit, minibar with free soft drinks and bottled water, and custom bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Rooms are as sleek and precision styled as the architecture, either set in the main Bauhaus building or in the newer glazed annexe. They’re dressed in walnut and tulip wood, travertine stone and granite, with silken carpets adding a pop of colour, custom furnishings by French makers Studio Liaigre, and artwork from the owners’ private collection, all by up-and-coming or established Israeli talents. Plus some very cool tech: TVs built into silver monoliths, Japanese toilets, iPads that swish the curtains about and set mood lighting. The Penthouse is as elegant a city pad as you could want, right down to the fresh green apples and white roses that greet guests, with a large terrace, bath tub with a view and wholly free minibar (including pre-mixed cocktails and baked treats from R2M’s pâtisserie). And, the glass-walled Garden Suites reveal quite the panorama and let you admire Piet Oudolf’s green-fingered work. Obviously, you could close the curtains, but they would also certainly suit more exhibitionist guests.
Poolside
Sliced into the rooftop of the Bauhaus building, with views of the neighbourhood’s aesthetically pleasing alabaster structures and shining skyscrapers, is a shaded terrace with a golden-marble infinity pool. Submerge yourself on one of the interior benches or sun yourself on one of the seats and sunloungers laid out around the sides.
Spa
There’s a serious gym onsite, packed with Cybex and Life Fitness gear. While there’s no spa, the hotel has teamed up with Yoko Kitahara in historic Jaffa (a 15-minute taxi ride away), which specialises in Japanese-style spoiling: massages with herbal poultices, acupressure, shiatsu, tui na. On request the hotel can arrange a personal trainer or even a class if you’re staying as a group.
Packing tips
We suppose boning up on the Bauhaus movement will help you to casually converse about functional shapes, Marcel Breuer and the like. And, if you’re staying in one of the glass-walled suites and are concerned about staying modest, don’t worry, luxurious robes are supplied.
Also
When modernising the building, the hotel took out one of the interior staircases and used the shaft to add a very cool glass elevator – and you can still see the ghost of the former stairs in the unrestored walls.
Children
Those who appreciate the fine lines of the International Style and leisurely paced tasting menus (ie adults) are more the hotel’s clientele, but kids old enough to stay in a separate room are welcome.
Sustainability efforts
The hotel’s beautiful core is a 1933 Bauhaus building that’s been cautiously and lovingly restored, and added to in keeping with Israel Conservation Authority guidelines. The owners, Torontonian billionaires Heather Reisman and Gerald Schwartz, rather sweetly see the hotel as their gift to the city, and it certainly was a labour of love, with the whole building suspended at one point in order to turn its lower quarters into a gym and restaurant. And, the beautiful Eclectic-style building next door is the HQ for the pair’s philanthropic HESEG foundation, which provides education and accommodation for the Israeli Defense Force’s ‘lone soldiers’ who don’t have family in Israel or are underprivileged.
Tel Aviv looks dynamic and dramatic from the third floor terrace, with a panorama of German-abstract structures and soaring mirrored monoliths.
Dress Code
Crisp, clean, geometric, with little ornamentation.
Hotel restaurant
Chef Ohad Solomon’s reputation is as far reaching as his palate, as evidenced by wall-to-wall bookings for the R48’s Chef’s Table restaurant, which serves a different 11-course tasting menu each night, with delicate dishes with ingredients from the Med, Middle and Far East. Each evening’s menu is a surprise, but past offerings include Jerusalem artichoke with peanut masala and cilantro chutney, mackerel sashimi with blood orange and lemongrass, hangar steak with salsa, and tonka bean panna cotta with strawberry and sumac jam. Breakfast is something of an event too, with freshly baked pastries and breads, cheeses, fruit salad and your choice of one dish (eggs en cocotte with matbucha, mackerel in lentil flatbread with horseradish aioli, white-chocolate pancakes with maple butter…), and a simpler all-day menu serves salads, soups, pastas and ice-cream. Come September, the hotel’s ground-floor R48 restaurant (with streetside seating) will operate on a more casual basis with a similar menu profile.
Hotel bar
The bar is set between the lobby and restaurant, and follows the hotel’s bright, clean-lined look. Here wines have been selected from all over the world – focusing on vineyards with environmentally sound practices – but there’s a wide choice of Israeli bottles to try, from Galilee to the coastal plains to the Judaean Hills. And there’s an edit of imaginative cocktails and mocktails too (after all, R2M owns some of the city’s coolest bars as well): the ‘Before You Start Your Day’ with cinnamon-infused white wine, oatmeal and crushed candied-pecan (served as a ‘breakfast’ drink if you want to start early); ‘Armano’ with vermouth, sherry, chamomile and passionfruit leaves; and ‘Virgillini’ with apricot juice, ginger beer, dried mint and fennel seeds.
Last orders
Breakfast is served from 8am to 10.30am.
Room service
Some rooms come with a kitchenette, but you can also have salads, soup, pasta, cheese plates, ice-creams and more delivered to your door around the clock.
Set amid the striking Bauhaus-build density of Tel Aviv’s White City, R48 Hotel and Garden (named for its address) is set on upscale, tree-lined Rothschild Boulevard, well placed for exploring.
Planes
Ben Gurion Airport is a 30-minute drive away from the hotel. Staff can arrange transfers from ILS700 each way, but if you’re staying two nights or more a return trip will be included in your rate.
Trains
Hashalom station is about a 10-minute drive away for connections to Beersheba, Nahariya, Jerusalem and beyond. And your closest Metro stop is Allenby on the Red Line. For easy exploring, invest in a Rav-Kav card.
Automobiles
You don’t really need a car in the city, but one might come in handy for hopping along the coastal highlights; there’s free valet parking at the hotel.
Worth getting out of bed for
Rothschild Boulevard runs through the Unesco-designated White City, a gathering of appealingly austere Bauhaus buildings with tiers of curvaceous balconies and a strict colour scheme. And with bike paths (you can borrow one from the hotel and they can even arrange a picnic too), coffee kiosks, a pétanque pitch, and rows of jacaranda trees running along it, it’s very pleasant for simply strolling along, although you could book a guided architecture tour for more insight into the ’hood. Or, you could wander R48 hotel’s modern gardens, which follow architectural lines. Otherwise, you can swim or play on one of the Jonathan Adler backgammon boards, or browse works by Israeli artists hung throughout the hotel: Ori Gersht’s botanical panels, Tal Shochat’s arboreal prints, Mosh Kashi’s minimalist nature drawings… More visual feasting awaits – the boulevard runs into buzzy enclave Neve Tzedek, which brims with creativity; its walls scream with colourful graffiti, an arts market is held on Nachalat Binyamin, there’s a centre for dance and theatre and the Nachum Gutman Museum, alongside indie boutiques, such as Seti for Gallic homewares or Fine Lab for organic goods in a colour scheme that matches R48’s. And then there’s the beach (which you can sail, surf or SUP off) and the grassy stretch of Charles Clore Park. Culture continues up the other end of Rothschild, with the Fredric Mann Auditorium (home of Israel’s philharmonic orchestra), Habima Theatre, and contemporary works at the Nassau Landau Art Foundation.
Local restaurants
The hotel’s Chef’s Table restaurant is a hot ticket, with covers booking up months in advance; guests get priority booking, so really it would be rude not to engage with its epic run of small plates. But, Rothschild Boulevard is also orbited by eateries. Try sister stay of sorts Hotel Montefiore, which has a French-Thai eatery whose dishes range from stilton and gruyère tortellini with caramelised figs to tom yum shrimp or sea-bass in a lemongrass cream. And we’re not sure exactly who Moses is, but he flips a mean burger just down the road. There are regular and kosher menus here, and delicious things packed between buns: burgers come with blue cheese, onion jam and sunflower sprouts; shredded asado meat, jalapeño and hot sauce; or goose breast, onion rings and piri-piri sauce. And you may well make friends at Social Club, which heaves with after-work revellers, and serves up artistic sushi, flame-seared steaks and tempura bites to go with moreish cocktails. And, for beachside dining, Manta Ray sits on the sand and specialises in fine seafood.
Local cafés
R48 is already pretty serious about breakfast, but Benedict might have it licked, with many iterations of its eggy name, stacked bagels, grills and vegan picks. Load up your table, but do try the unique ‘egg balls’: omelette-style bites served with shrimp, Bloody Mary sauce, sweet cream and parmesan. For picnic fixings or just various flavours of rugelach, halva-stuffed Danishes and babkas to nibble on, hit up Delicatessen Yehuda Halevi. And get your caffeine fix at punnily named industrial joint Waycup.
Local bars
Rothschild is part of Tel Aviv’s ‘party mile’, so expect some late nights and sore heads. Gigi is a multi-floor fun factory; Polly has a leafy, fairy-lit courtyard; Buxa is moodier with a roster of underground DJs, and Jimmywho? may have you saying ‘Jimmy where?’ as this cool-as-can-be bunker-style spot is tucked away in a nondescript building. And, the R2M group has its own very hip hotspot: Herzl 16, with live music and cocktails in a rare neoclassical building,
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 architecturally sound hotel in the White City and unpacked their Galileen wines and Dead Sea bath salts, a full account of their bowing-to-Bauhaus break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside R48 Hotel and Garden at the heart of Tel Aviv…
Bauhaus architecture is, by design, functional and fuss-free – although much of the latter has gone into R48 Hotel and Garden, a fine example of the architectural form at the heart of Tel Aviv’s White City. The 1933 stay’s restoration was a 10-year labour of love by billionaire business couple Heather Reisman and Gerald Schwartz, who ensured the precise lines and curved balconies weren’t disrupted as they levitated the building to integrate a street-level restaurant, added a rooftop pool and new suites with nearly fully glazed walls, and commissioned landscape artist Piet Oudolf (who lushly planted the High Line in New York) to create modern natural vignettes throughout. The result is a true marvel: light-flooded, with views every which way; design is crisp and clean with Studio Liaigre furnishings, artworks by Israeli greats (or soon-to-be greats) and top tech (Japanese toilets, TVs set in mirrored blocks); and a new glass elevator runs through a former stairwell, with walls left as they were so you can see the outline of the original steps. But, to bring the building to life, the owners handed the reins to super-hip hospitality group R2M (who run nearby Hotel Montefiore, Coffeebar and Herzl 16 cocktail joint). It has made bookings at the Chef’s Table restaurant (with daily-changing tasting menus) a hot commodity, added its own-brand pre-mixed cocktails and baked goods to minibars, and made service highly personalised and seamless. When it comes to highly functioning, R48 is on top form.
