Backstage Hotel - an Atlas Boutique Hotel

The Ohel Theatre, Rebuilt as a Hotel

Beilinson Street runs off Dizengoff Square, in the middle of the district Tel Aviv built in the 1930s and 1940s and that UNESCO now calls the White City. The building at number 6 went up in that period and housed the Ohel Theatre, one of the country's founding companies. The restoration that turned it into a hotel kept the idea rather than the furniture: a central atrium treated as a stage and lit with floodlights, silk stage curtains used as room dividers, leather and wood throughout. It is a theme, and themes usually go wrong. This one holds because the building really was a theatre.

Why It Works

Tel Aviv has a great many boutique hotels and most of them are variations on the same white-and-blond-wood idea. This one has a subject. Twenty-eight rooms keep it small, six different room sizes mean you are not forced into a category that does not fit, and the Atlas group runs it with the consistency that a young independent rarely manages. The two public rooms do real work: a café downstairs that treats brunch as a production, and a rooftop cocktail bar with live music and comedy that the city actually uses. There is a spa service, a business lounge and a terrace for events. For a hotel this size, that is a lot of programme.

Why This Location

Dizengoff Square is around the corner, which puts you at the centre of the White City: Bauhaus blocks in every direction, the Dizengoff Street shops and cafés running north and south, and the Bauhaus Center a short walk away for anyone who wants the buildings explained. Rothschild Boulevard and its bars are about fifteen minutes on foot south, Habima Square and the concert halls slightly less, and the beach at Gordon is ten or twelve minutes due west. This is the part of Tel Aviv where people actually live, so the street has bakeries and dry cleaners rather than souvenir shops, and it stays busy until late.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: theatrical, urban, design-led, sociable

• Rooms: twenty-eight across six categories, from petit and classic through patio rooms with a private garden to premium, duplex and a junior suite with living room

• Best For: couples, design travellers, city breaks, anyone who wants to walk everywhere

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the atrium, floodlit like a stage set, which is the first thing you see on arrival and the reason the theme works

• Dining: the Backstage Café for a theatrical brunch, buffet and table service combined; the Stanley rooftop cocktail bar with live music and comedy

• Amenities: rooftop garden over Dizengoff Square, spa treatments using cocoa and honey, business lounge, events terrace, pets accepted

• Attractions: Dizengoff Square and the White City Bauhaus blocks, Rothschild Boulevard, Habima Square, Gordon Beach, Carmel Market

Six Room Sizes, From Petit to Duplex

The ladder here is unusually fine-grained, and it is worth using. The petit is genuinely small, about fourteen square metres, and it is the honest choice for anyone who intends to be out. The classic and premium sit in the middle. The patio rooms come with a private garden, rare in this city at any price. The duplex runs to about thirty square metres over two levels, and the junior suite to forty, with separate sleeping and living areas. Bathrooms are tiled in green and white with rain showers, and the theatre motif runs through all of them without becoming a costume.

The Stanley, and the Brunch Downstairs

The Stanley is on the roof and is the reason people who are not staying here walk in. Cocktails, a view over the rooftops, and a programme of live music and stand-up that changes through the week. Downstairs the Backstage Café handles brunch, which in Tel Aviv is a serious meal and is staged here as one, half buffet and half table service. Between them, breakfast and the last drink are covered without leaving the building.

A Roof Over Dizengoff

The rooftop garden looks out over Dizengoff Square, the round plaza with the fountain at its centre that the city keeps rebuilding and arguing about. It is the best free seat in the neighbourhood, especially in the hour before dinner when the light comes off the white façades. Take it once at the start of the stay to work out the district, and once at the end for the view.