I start the day with lazy strokes in the hotel pool. I swim a couple of laps, but I’m really more absorbed in taking in the room. High above me, the vaulted ceiling; along the sides, two levels of arcades and rounded arches. At the far end, an enormous arched window lets the morning light pour in and mingle with the pink glow that rises from the tile floor and is thrown up toward the ceiling.
After my swim, I find the breakfast restaurant, set in what used to be the bathhouse’s own combined heat and power plant, with a 17-meter-high ceiling. The building, after all, wasn’t built as a hotel but as one of Berlin’s first public bathhouses. In addition to the power plant, the facility also had its own water tower, which today provides the brick shell for five of the hotel’s 70 rooms.
