The Ivens opened in 2021 in a 1920s neoclassical building on Rua Ivens in Chiado — the building that previously housed the Garniera silverware shop and before that a literary café. The conversion preserved the marble floors, the carved wooden doors, and the proportions of a building that understood what a Chiado building should be and then maintained those proportions across a renovation that could easily have destroyed them. The corridors — their striped marble in green, white, and burgundy, the dark panelled doors, the globe pendant light on a long brass stem — are the clearest evidence of what a hotel renovation can do when it trusts the original material. The roof terrace looks over the Chiado roofscape toward the river. The location puts you inside the neighbourhood that contains A Brasileira, the Livraria Bertrand, and the quiet streets running down toward the Bairro Alto — the correct base for the correct version of Lisbon.
Chiado, Lisbon, Portugal