L’Ermitage Beverly Hills – a residence renamed for the Hermitage

On a palm-lined stretch of Burton Way, a few minutes on foot from Rodeo Drive, L’Ermitage Beverly Hills has spent half a century setting itself apart from the grander hotels around it. The building was designed in 1975 to hold condominiums before developers Severyn and Arnold Ashkenazy converted it into an all-suite hotel, naming it for the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. For years its corridors and suites held Van Gogh and Renoir paintings from Arnold Ashkenazy’s own collection, an unusually serious art pedigree for a residential side street. The hotel standing today is the product of a costly 1990s rebuild and further renovations since, most recently a rooftop remake by the architecture firm WATG with interiors by Champalimaud. It holds 116 suites and no standard rooms, and the MICHELIN Guide gives it Two Key status alongside AAA Five Diamond distinction.

01The house

The Ashkenazy brothers’ hotel did not survive under their ownership: Ashkenazy Enterprises filed for bankruptcy in 1986 to fend off foreclosure, the property passed to Independence One Bank of California in 1992 under a federal agreement, was sold on for an estimated $12 million in 1993, and was bought the following year by Paris-based Immobiliere Hoteliers and Los Angeles-based Colony Capital, who closed the hotel for four years and spent $65 million on a full rebuild before it reopened in 1998 with a noticeably sleeker, less stodgy image.

A further renovation in 2016 touched every suite and public room, adding art selected by Paragone Gallery alongside giclée prints and wire-mesh sculptures from local artists. The latest change is the rooftop, reworked by WATG’s architecture and landscape teams under managing principals Greg Villegas and Lance Walker, with furnishings and interiors by Champalimaud. An underused artificial-turf deck and dated structures were replaced with a sculptural wood-clad bar, a reconstructed pool and a dining terrace, the platform raised just enough to open views toward the Hollywood Hills and downtown Los Angeles.

02Rooms and suites

All 116 accommodations here are suites; L’Ermitage has no standard double. Every one is dressed in Frette linens and marble bathrooms, with dressing rooms and sun-filled French balconies as standard. The Palm and L’Ermitage Suites go further, adding full-service kitchens and dining rooms for guests who want to live in the hotel rather than just sleep in it. The flagship L’Ermitage Suite occupies the seventh floor at roughly 3,700 square feet, with a private office, a screening room, a spa treatment room and a kitchen of its own. Below it, the Heritage Suites add kitchenettes for longer stays, and the Classic Suites — the hotel’s only connecting rooms — are finished with onyx marble bathrooms and writer’s desks.

Insider tip

Quiet residential street close to Rodeo Drive; rooftop pool and restaurant reserved mainly for hotel guests.

03Where to eat

Dining runs through two kitchens. Costa Covo Osteria handles the newly conceived everyday cooking, built on handmade pasta and local seafood with coastal Mediterranean and Italian leanings, while Poza and the adjoining Arhaus Terrace bring rooftop dining and sweeping Beverly Hills views to the top floor. For the first time in the hotel’s history, both are now open to visitors who aren’t staying the night, with dining reservations at Poza and private events on the Arhaus Terrace. A 24-hour in-suite menu covers everything outside those hours.

04The bar

A lobby negroni lounge called Alcova gives arriving guests somewhere other than the front desk to wait. On the roof, Poza’s bar looks over the pool toward the hills, with private cabanas that can be rented by the day or half-day, stocked with complimentary water, fruit and soda, and fitted with their own flat-screen televisions for guests who would rather not move at all.

05Spa and wellbeing

The wellness offer runs through private rooms rather than a single spa floor. There are two private treatment rooms, or therapists will come to a guest room or a cabana beside the rooftop pool for a facial or massage. Joanna Czech’s skincare studio and a salon run by stylist Alon Shalom both operate inside the hotel, alongside a fitness centre fitted with Peloton bikes and Hydrow rowers. The rooftop pool itself measures 22 by 31 feet and stays at 86°F year-round, with the pool, sundeck and poolside service reserved for registered hotel guests.

06The neighbourhood

L’Ermitage sits on the palm-lined boulevard of Burton Way, a stone’s throw from Rodeo Drive, the commercial heart of Beverly Hills, but tucked within a peaceful residential enclave that keeps it removed from the busiest streets of Los Angeles while leaving its boutiques, galleries and restaurants within easy reach. A house car and concierge-arranged outings — hikes up Runyon Canyon, surf lessons in Malibu — extend that same quiet approach to seeing the wider city.

07Making the most of a stay

L’Ermitage has held a Forbes Travel Guide five-star rating continuously since 2000, and in 2023 Travel + Leisure named it the second-best city hotel in Greater Los Angeles in its World’s Best Awards. Pets are welcome in a number of suites, in keeping with the hotel’s residential pitch, and a limited number of rooftop pool loungers can be booked by non-guests through ResortPass. For a stay that uses the place properly: take one of the kitchen suites, eat downstairs at Costa Covo at least once, and go up to Poza as the light changes over the hills.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.