Inside the Pulitzer Amsterdam’s New Tulip-Inspired Suite

The Flower Collector’s Suite includes a fuchsia sitting area and a verdant bedroom.

Writer Elia Essen

If you’ve ever wished you could curl up within the petals of a tulip flower, look no further. Just in time for tulip season, the Pulitzer Amsterdam welcomes guests to its newest addition, the Flower Collector’s Suite, a bright and botanical retreat designed by Lore Group creative director Jacu Strauss, who oversaw the hotel’s massive renovation project in 2016.

The colourful rooms add to the hotel’s Collector’s Suite lineup, a series of themed accommodations that delve into the imagined interests of the Dutch aristocrats who might have lived within the walls of the hotel’s 17th- and 18th-century canal houses—other Collector’s Suites include books, music, antiques, and art.

Founded in 1970 by Peter Pulitzer, grandson of the Pulitzer Prize founder, the Pulitzer Amsterdam began as 12 run-down Golden Age canal houses. Over the next 30 years, Pulitzer bought 13 more and built the hotel into the oldest five-star hotel in Amsterdam. Now, the hotel, situated between two canals in the historic Nine Streets neighbourhood, consists of 225 guest rooms and suites, a gym, spa, bar and restaurant, and beautiful gardens designed by celebrated Dutch landscape architects Copijn.

Complete with a private entrance, the Flower Collector’s Suite is a cheerful 430-square-foot sanctuary inspired by the city’s world-famous floral traditions. Guests enter through a grand stone hallway with a chandelier and a vaulted ceiling. The walls are adorned with vintage golden-framed mirrors, and statuettes of dogs stand watch atop corbels. Fresh flowers welcome guests from their place on an ornate entry table.

With a pink-and-white palette and floor-to-ceiling windows that offer views of the Keizersgracht, the widest of Amsterdam’s three major canals, the sitting room is cheerful and light-filled. A plush white couch stretches from wall to wall, and in front of a white table, two conical fuchsia chairs mimic the shape of a curved petal. On the floor, petals seem to be strewn on the round cherry-blossom-pink rug. Crown moulding frames custom-made tiles of hand-pressed flowers on one wall and glass panelling from vintage greenhouses on the other. Petalled lighting fixtures hang from the ceiling and walls and sit on a wood storage cabinet

If the sitting area is the flower’s bud, the bedroom is its stem, with moody forest-green walls, dark-wood furniture, and an emerald desk chair and mint settee. The walls are crowded with horticultural paintings in gilded frames—most are antique and were collected locally, but one was made by Strauss himself—and are arranged to imitate the Royal Academy in the late Victorian era. An inviting superking bed features carved tulip finials on the headboard, which also appear on the sofa legs. Connecting the living and sleeping areas is a walk-through bathroom clad in Carrara marble with two freestanding sinks and heated vanity mirrors and stocked with D.S. & Durga products.

Because of Pulitzer Amsterdam’s central location, there’s no shortage of things to do nearby: the Anne Frank House, the Royal Market, Dam Square, and the Flower Market are all less than a mile away. Or see the city like a local, on two wheels (the hotel has guest bikes for rent, and each room has a bicycle repair kit) or from the water, aboard one of Pulitzer Amsterdam’s two canal boats. After a day of exploring, dine al fresco at the verdant Pulitzer Garden before drifting off to floral dreams in the Flower Collector’s Suite.