“Follow this way,” said I Komang Suardana as he led me down a narrow alley beside The Shinmonzen. Suardana was the guest experience supervisor of the luxury boutique hotel in Kyoto when I visited last year and is now its assistant general manager.
We wound through a stone-paved alleyway in the shadow of machiya roof eaves, passing doorways to tiny izakayas and restaurants, before emerging a few minutes later into the bright sunlight. Suardana, smiling broadly, announced that we had arrived in the heart of Gion.
Tourists strolled along Shinbashi-dori, filling their cameras with charming scenes of Kyoto’s famed geisha district, where rows of historic machiyas climb the gentle slope toward the 1,350-year-old Yasaka Shrine. Having found the hotel’s entrance so serene, I was surprised to discover how close it was to the lively heart of Gion.
Opened in 2021, The Shinmonzen was a 10-year labour of love by Belgian hotelier Paddy McKillen and an ensemble of renowned collaborators. Japanese architect Tadao Ando shaped its machiya-inspired architecture, while French interior designer Remi Tessier brought warmth and refinement to the interiors.
McKillen and Ando first worked together on McKillen’s Chateau La Coste in Provence, completed in 2011. Ando designed the master plan for the sprawling estate, which includes Villa La Coste, an art centre and chapel by the architect himself, a music pavilion by Frank O. Gehry, and an auditorium by Oscar Niemeyer – all set amid artworks by Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Sophie Calle, Yoko Ono, Ai Weiwei, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, among other luminaries.
AloJapan.com