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Bilderberg Jan Luyken

The fortuitous setting of the Bilderberg Jan Luyken means that it overcomes the usual annoying paradox of hotels in major cities: the ones close to everything are too noisy, and the ones quiet enough to permit sleep are miles from anywhere.

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The fortuitous setting of the Bilderberg Jan Luyken means that it overcomes the usual annoying paradox of hotels in major cities: the ones close to everything are too noisy, and the ones quiet enough to permit sleep are miles from anywhere. The Bilderberg Jan Luyken is a matter of metres away from the Van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum, around the corner from the upmarket shopping on PC Hooftstraat, very close to Vondel Park, and barely a five-minute walk from Leidseplein - but it is situated in a quiet, leafy residential street. Even in the downstairs rooms facing the road, you can hear little louder than the occasional trilling of bicycle bells.

The Jan Luyken is spread across three 19th-century townhouses, built in the Jugendstil style. These were originally amalgamated in the 1950s to serve as a hospice attached to a physiotherapy practice run by a Dr Van Schaik. It was initially turned into a hotel in 1966, and was purchased by Bilderberg in 2000. Since then, it has been completely redecorated. The 62 rooms share a modern boutique house style of subtle brown, maroon and beige furnishings, but all the rooms are different, to accomodate the architectural oddities of the old building. There is some imaginative use of space; the trouser-presses are secreted in hidden cupboards behind the wall mirrors.

There are four classes of room available: single, standard, business and superior. The business and superior rooms, as well as being larger, cater specifically for the working visitor. Each has an invitingly large desk and, in an unusual and thoughtful touch, exactly the sort of office accessories that you wouldn¹t usually think of packing: a calculator, a stapler and a hole-puncher. The standard rooms are unusually spacious for a hotel in such an old building and the tiny rooms common in Amsterdam terraces are thoughtfully designed to make the most of what they have: if there isn¹t room for a bath, the entire bathroom will be a shower room.

All the rooms have electronic safes, air conditioning, coffee-and-tea-making facilities, minibars, wireless internet, televisions and stereos, and the hotel also has a small library of CDs and books from which guests can order. The bathrooms are tiled, and notably spacious, and if they're not enough, the hotel has its own health spae, containing a jacuzzi, a solarium, a steam-bath and a massage chair.

The hotel also has a reasonably priced bar called Wines & Bites. Though not a full-service restaurant, it serves decent snacks and, mindful of the solo business traveller, makes a point of its impressive range of half-bottles of wine. The subterranean breakfast room has its own chef, which makes a pleasant change from the usual DIY buffet of stale croissants and tired fruit salad. The agreeable lounge is dominated by a curious relic of the building's odd history - a painting, which one of Dr Van Schaik's patients submitted in lieu of cash.