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 (EUR113.08), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Your induction to the capital’s in-crowd awaits at Sly Berlin, a design-savvy stay where the city’s grungy, techno-soundtracked artists’ quarter gets a boutique glow-up – and a significantly better night’s sleep. At the greenhouse-inspired restaurant, horn-rim-rocking locals bond over houseplant parenthood and robata-fired steaks. In the rooftop sauna, expect animated chats about Arflex chairs or Louis Poulsen lamps. And after a night in the bar, you’ll be on first-name terms with the beer sommelier and a convert to sage in cocktails. We’d say this place makes a fine base for forays out to find the city’s cool kids, but chances are, they’re already here…
Noon. Check-in is at 3pm. Both are flexible, subject to availability, for an extra €40 fee.
Prices
Double rooms from £107.81 (€127), including tax at 12 per cent.
More details
Rates at Sly Berlin are room-only, but you can tuck into a buffet breakfast including cooked options, fresh-baked treats and a full Continental spread for €32 a person.
Also
11 rooms have been specially adapted for guests with reduced mobility. All the hotel’s communal areas are wheelchair accessible, with accessible public bathrooms and lift access to every floor.
At the hotel
Sauna, 24-hour snack shop, rooftop terrace and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: TV, Marshall Bluetooth speaker, Nespresso coffee machine, tea-making kit, free bottled water, air-conditioning and Molton Brown bath products.
Our favourite rooms
There’s no bad pick when every room is packed with cool designer pieces, but for extra space and plenty of peace, swing for the Sly Courtyard Room.
Spa
There’s a Klafs sauna on the top floor, so you can unwind with a bird’s eye view of the Berlin rooftops. There’s also a fitness room in the basement, kitted out with gym equipment, weights and yoga mats.
Packing tips
Come ready for a street art tour with some worn-in Docs and a few rolls of 35mm film.
Also
The hotel has its own Späti – a late-night convenience store and trusty snack pitstop for the city’s late-night partiers. At Sly’s version of this Berlin institution, you can pick up a curated selection of artisanal treats and tipples, around the clock.
Pet‐friendly
Waggy tails are welcome in Sly Rooms, Sly Large, Sly Signature and Sly Courtyard Rooms, where they’ll be well looked after with a dog bed, bowl and treats. There’s a pet fee of €25 a day for each pooch. See more pet-friendly hotels in Berlin.
Children
Little Smiths are welcome, and can look forward to free pick ’n’ mix on arrival. The Courtyard Rooms each have a single sofa-bed.
For the full greenhouse experience, take a pew beneath a towering bird of paradise plant.
Dress Code
No need to go the full Berghain, but the extra edge of a little vintage leder won’t hurt.
Hotel restaurant
Between the ferns and ficuses of Sly’s light-flooded greenhouse restaurant, head chef Matthias serves up a finely spun Asian-fusion menu. Rubia Gallega steaks are flame-cooked on the robata grill, and speciality seafood dishes include sesame-sprinkled teriyaki salmon and miso cod with rainbow carrots and beurre blanc.
Hotel bar
Claim a Bertoia chair or cherry leather sofa, cradle a botanical cocktail and ostentatiously catch up on your Camus reading at Sly’s cosy bar. Master mixologist Dennis makes the herb-infused syrups from scratch – make ours a Minus 6, a Sly classic in which gin is muddled with tarragon, lychee and Japanese plum liqueur. The alcohol-free options are just as inventive, and if it’s a craft brew you’re after, beer sommelier Sunny is your guy.
Last orders
Sly Restaurant is open for dinner from 5pm to 10pm daily. The bar pours from 9am till late.
Room service
There’s no room service, but you can stock up on artisanal snacks and tipples round the clock at the hotel’s Späti shop.
Sly Berlin calls Friedrichshain home, an east Berlin ’hood where the city’s artists congregate and techno-pulsing clubs butt up against colourful Cold War history.
Planes
Berlin Brandenburg Airport is a 45-minute drive away. The hotel can arrange transfers for around €80 each way.
Trains
The city’s eastern hub, Ostbahnhof, is around a 10-minute drive from the hotel. Roll in from German cities including Frankfurt, Cologne and Düsseldorf, as well as international capitals like Vienna and Amsterdam.
Automobiles
Berlin is best seen by strolling, and is well connected with the full metro, bus and tram trifecta, but if you do bring your own wheels there’s free underground parking at the hotel.
Other
Your nearest tram stop is Landsberger Allee/Petersburger Strasse, less than five minutes’ walk from the hotel. Hop on the M5, M6, M8 or M10 tram to head into the centre of Friedrichshain or Berlin Mitte.
Worth getting out of bed for
Step out of Sly Berlin and it seems every street tells a story of Friedrichhain’s Soviet past and friendly, free-spirited present. Top of your cultural check-list: the East Side Gallery, the longest surviving section of the Berlin Wall, now reclaimed by artists from across the globe with kaleidoscopic political murals. Stick with the street art theme at RAW Tempel, a gritty cultural hub where sporty Berliners skate and boulder between industrial buildings plastered with graffiti and stickers. Up your landmark quota at Oberbaumbrücke, the grand neo-Gothic bridge that once served as a crossing point between East and West Berlin. The boutique-lined streets surrounding Boxhagener Platz are always good for a stroll, but go on Sundays to rifle through the treasure-rich flea market. And for a beech-shaded breather, take a turn about the leafy trails of Volkspark Friedrichshain, the oldest public park in Berlin and, as per local wisdom, prime picnic territory.
Local restaurants
A sustainable farm in the Spreewald Forest powers the menu at Michelberger. Ingredients are foraged, hunted and organically grown, so the menu changes seasonally, but expect hearty treats such as hand-rolled dumplings, wild mushrooms and plenty of field-fresh veg.
Local cafés
Set in an atmospheric old building between old East German apartment blocks, Saaldeck Café and Bar makes a stylish pitstop for a flat white and slice of fresh-baked apfelkuchen.
Local bars
A skip down the street from Sly, Barrel Weinbar is a local-favourite spot with a cellar well-stocked with some of Europe’s finest labels. Inside it’s invitingly rustic, but we’d take a table out in the square – on chilly evenings, you can always order an emmental-loaded flammkuchen to warm the cockles.
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 hip hotel in the German capital and unpacked their artsy film snaps and flea market finds, a full account of their culture-steeped break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Sly Berlin…
So you’ve outgrown grunge and your Berghain days are behind you, but you’ve still got the Berlin bug. You feel the pull of hipster heartland Friedrichshain, where punchy street art punks up boutique-lined squares and leather-clad clubbers sway home past Cold War-history walking tours, but all-nighters are no longer your jam.
Enter Sly Berlin, a style-conscious Friedrichshain stay where the city’s cool kids come to grow up. A big night out here might involve a few too many botanical-infused cocktails as you swap record store recs with beanie-wearing locals, with late-night döner swapped for robata-grilled Galician steak at the glass-roofed restaurant. And sure, the skyline-gazing sauna would work wonders on a hangover, but it’s just as well-suited to winding down after a hard day’s gallery-hopping. It all makes for a laidback boutique base for exploring east Berlin’s edgiest neighbourhood, with the city centre a tram-hop away. And happily you’re not going to be turned away at the door for lack of a leather harness, either (although mistake the Fritz Hansen furniture for flatpack and we can make no promises…)
