Pillows Maurits at the Park – a 1908 anatomy hall turned Two-Key hotel

East of Amsterdam's canal ring, where the city gives way to the winding paths of Oosterpark, Pillows Grand Boutique Hotel Maurits at the Park occupies a red-brick building raised in 1908 as an anatomical laboratory for the city's university and later used as its Zoological Museum, before reopening in November 2022 as Pillows Hotels' first five-star address. The transformation, overseen by architects Office Winhov with interiors by Studio Linse, kept the school-hall austerity of the corridors intact while softening the public rooms with warm, tactile materials. The MICHELIN Guide now awards the house Two MICHELIN Keys, recognising a stay with real character rather than borrowed polish. Eighty-eight rooms and suites, three restaurants and bars, and a guest-only lounge called The Living sit inside the old U-shaped plan, while downstairs the fine-dining room VanOost, led by chef Floris van Straalen, carries a MICHELIN Plate for its French-Japanese cooking.

01The house

The building dates from 1908, when it was constructed as the Ontleedkundig Laboratorium – an anatomical laboratory – for Amsterdam's municipal university, to a design by the architect Jan Bernard Springer, commissioned by the city's Public Works department. Its original U-shaped plan, with a central study hall beneath a lecture theatre, later became home to the university's Zoological Museum, a collection formed in 1892 by merging the holdings of Artis with the municipal collection. The museum closed in 2011, and the property was sold in 2014 for conversion into a hotel.

A six-year restoration followed, led by architect Uri Gilad of Office Winhov with interiors by Paul Linse of Studio Linse, and the developers chose to remove the fences around the grounds, returning roughly an acre of parkland to Oosterpark for residents to use freely. The hotel opened on 1 November 2022, the fifth anniversary of the Pillows Hotels group and its first five-star property, and in its opening year it reached number one on Tripadvisor among more than four hundred Amsterdam hotels. Public rooms carry paintings by Gustav Klimt, Pablo Picasso, Constant and Jasper Krabbé from the owner's private collection, while every guest room holds a work by the Dutch artist Raphaël Hermans.

02Rooms and suites

The 88 rooms and suites are arranged across five floors behind the glazed brick corridors of the old museum, ranging from Luxury Rooms on the lower ground floor to Junior Suites, Pillows Suites and Signature Loft Suites, each finished with plush duck-down bedding, curated art, Dyson hairdryers and Diptyque bath products. High ceilings, deep original windows and the odd stained-glass pane give even the smaller rooms a sense of light and scale rarely found in a city-centre hotel.

Insider tip

Beside Oosterpark, next to the Tropenmuseum, a minute from tram stop Alexanderplein.

At the top sits the Pillows Grand Suite, the house's flagship, complete with its own grand piano and a marble bathroom built around a freestanding soaking tub – the kind of residential grandeur that nods to the building's institutional past while feeling entirely private.

03Where to eat

VanOost occupies the first floor of the old building, in what was once the anatomy hall, its soaring timber-beamed ceiling, stained-glass windows and open kitchen framed by a marble bar. Chef Floris van Straalen, who began cooking at fifteen and trained under chefs including Sergio Herman, now works under the mentorship of three-MICHELIN-starred chef Jannis Brevet, shaping a French-Japanese menu that runs from a chef's table at the kitchen counter to tasting menus of five to seven courses. Signature dishes include an 'Indonesian' langoustine with bumbu and sambal, and Anjou pigeon 'Rossini' with black truffle and Madeira; the wine list, curated by sommelier Rick Neuteboom, won an Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator in 2025. VanOost serves dinner from Wednesday to Saturday.

For easier moments, Spring Café Brasserie opens onto a terrace that spills directly into Oosterpark, serving French- and Italian-inflected brasserie dishes through breakfast, lunch and dinner – the kind of all-day room that locals, not just hotel guests, treat as their own.

04The bar

Fitz's Bar takes its name, and its mood, from F. Scott Fitzgerald: a velvet and wood-panelled room built around the aesthetics of 1920s cocktail culture, tucked just off the lobby for an evening aperitif before dinner. Above it, the rooftop terrace – known in-house as the Deck of Joy – opens in the warmer months for champagne and cocktails with views over the treetops of Oosterpark, a quieter counterpoint to the canal-belt rooftops across town.

05Spa and wellbeing

The Urban Spa is reserved for hotel guests and built around a short, intense sense of calm rather than a full wellness circuit: a handful of treatment rooms, a gym, and a sauna that can be booked privately for up to four people, with fruit and homemade sweets included. Facials and body treatments now follow the holistic skincare line developed by the Austrian brand Susanne Kaufmann in the Alpine region of Bregenzerwald, alongside a hydrojet massage bed that combines the sensation of warm water with a deep-tissue massage, worked through without undressing.

06The neighbourhood

Amsterdam East is the hotel's natural habitat: the Tropenmuseum stands next door, Artis Zoo is a five-minute walk away, and the Dappermarkt street market is ten minutes on foot. The nearest tram stop, Alexanderplein, is a minute from the front door, putting the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Nine Streets within easy reach without ever feeling like the tourist centre. By car, the hotel is ten minutes from the A10 ring road and twenty minutes from Schiphol Airport, with valet parking into the hotel's own underground garage.

07Making the most of a stay

The Living, a card-key lounge at the heart of the old museum hall, works as both sitting room and quiet office, with an honesty bar of drinks, cookies and crisps available around the clock and a Les Clefs d'Or concierge team on hand. They are worth using properly here – arranging behind-the-scenes museum visits, after-hours canal cruises or cycling routes through Oosterpark and the surrounding streets that most visitors never see.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.