A confectioner's pleasure palace from 1863, the salons Strindberg made famous, Sweden's first Chinese restaurant and a duplex suite behind the clock. Berns on Berzelii Park is where staying the night means checking into Stockholm's social history.
In this story · 5 sections
On the edge of Berzelii Park, a few steps from Nybroplan and the waterfront, a long Belle Époque building with tall arched windows and a clock on its roof has been entertaining Stockholm since 1863. Berns is a restaurant, cocktail bar, nightclub, concert stage and event house – and a boutique hotel, so that a night here means sleeping under the same roof as more than a century and a half of the city's social life. In its own words, it is the only place in Stockholm with event venues, a hotel, a restaurant, a cocktail bar and several nightclubs together.
Berns
Hotel · Norrmalm
© OpenStreetMap contributors · OpenFreeMap
- Address
- Berzelii Park, Stockholm
- Location
- Berzelii Park, central Stockholm
- Opened
- 1 August 1863
- Architects
- Johan Fredrik Åbom, Magnus Isæus, Gustaf Wickman
- Restaurant
- Berns Asiatiska
- Signature suite
- Clock Suite, 56 m² duplex
- Room service
- Daily 11.00–22.00
Boutique hotel in the 1863 salons, with Berns Asiatiska, bars, clubs and a concert stage.
01A confectioner's salon
The house was built in 1862–1863 by the confectioner Heinrich Robert Berns and opened on 1 August 1863. In 1886 his son, then the proprietor, added a second salon at an angle to the first, and the name changed from Berns Salong to Berns Salonger. The architects were Johan Fredrik Åbom, Magnus Isæus and Gustaf Wickman. The great salons, with their gilding, mirrors, galleries and tall windows towards the park, rise the full height of the building.
They also entered literature. August Strindberg's novel "The Red Room" – and its "Gothic Rooms" – took their names from salons at Berns; the Red Room was a meeting place for Stockholm's bachelors in the 1870s, and a venue called Röda Rummet is still part of the house.
02A stage for the world
The house has always been about performance. In 1866 Swedish audiences saw the cancan here for the first time. International artists who have appeared at Berns include Josephine Baker, Miriam Makeba, Aretha Franklin, Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Louis Armstrong and Rihanna, alongside Swedish entertainers from Karl Gerhard to Hasse and Tage. Concerts are held either in the dining room for a seated audience or in the adjoining hall, which takes around 1,200 standing. The house's event rooms today include the Ballroom, the Mirror Hall, Ljusgården, the Gallery, the Terrace and the Red Room, and since the spring of 2011 Berns has been part of the Stureplan Group.
Insider tipBook the Clock Suite for the view over the park.
03Sweden's first Chinese restaurant
In 1944 the house was bought by the restaurant chain Norma, and Berns became the first place in Sweden to serve Chinese food: its new director, Jonas Folcker, hired two leading Chinese chefs from a restaurant in Berlin. That history lives on in Berns Asiatiska, which today draws on the kitchens of Thailand, Korea and Japan as well as China, with a raw bar and a hot kitchen. Brunch is served at weekends and lunch on weekdays, with weekly specials and sushi.
04Staying at Berns
A hotel was integrated into the house during a thorough renovation by Agora Architects in the 1980s, when conference rooms were also created in the basement. Berns describes itself as a boutique hotel in which every room is unique. Rooms range from Cosy Essential rooms of 9–13 square metres and Essential rooms of 13–18 square metres to Spacious Superior rooms, Deluxe Signature rooms of 30–40 square metres, Balcony Suites of 35 square metres and Junior Suites of 34–64 square metres.
The house's signature is the Clock Suite: a 56-square-metre duplex with classic mullioned windows, a large living room and views over Berzelii Park, which the hotel calls its most luxurious room. It comes with an extended minibar and fresh flowers, and like the other rooms it has a walk-in shower, toiletries by The Botanist & the Chemist, a coffee machine and a Bluetooth speaker.
Room service runs daily from 11am to 10pm, and breakfast in bed can be ordered the evening before; a service fee of 150 kronor applies. There is a small gym open from 7am to 10pm, massage on request, a concierge, valet parking, a library and guided tours of the history of Berns.
05The neighbourhood
Berns stands at the meeting point of Norrmalm and Östermalm: Strandvägen, Nybroviken and the Royal Dramatic Theatre are a few minutes away, Kungsträdgården and the Royal Opera lie just to the west, and the Hallwyl Museum is around the corner on Hamngatan. Read about the setting in VERA PI's guides to Berzelii Park and Näckströmsgatan, explore Norrmalm, and follow our plan for a day on Östermalm. Outside, point your phone at the façade with Metro Mode Camera.
