“Paris is always a good idea,” Audrey Hepburn said – and certainly it was for her, putting up at The Ritz. But budget should never stand in the way of good ideas or good times. In fact, it’s often those small, family-run hotels, characterful and pleasingly affordable, that are most conducive to the kind of authentic, live-like-a-local experiences that reveal the true soul of a city.
Those homes-from-home with genial owners who can help you tap into the culture, recommend their favourite neighbourhood restaurants, unmissable street food and inexpensive lesser-known sights. And who wants to linger indoors anyway, when Europe’s myriad cultural wonders and thrumming creative quarters are out there for the taking?
Here are 20 charming and affordable hotels in Europe’s most splendid cities, all with rooms for less than £150 a night. To secure the best rates, book direct and go off-season. You’ll avoid the crowds, too.
Madrid
7 Islas
Step through the steel doors of 7 Islas and you find yourself in an art gallery, bar and restaurant, which also acts as the lobby of this unconventional family-run hotel in Malasaña, one of Madrid’s coolest neighbourhoods.
There’s a real dedication to the local art scene here, with regular exhibitions and book launches. Rooms, created by local design firm Kikekeller, are just as artful: white walls and floorboards, sculptural beds and handwoven geometric kilims by Gan Rugs. Bicycles are available for guests (complimentary when you book direct) to explore Spain’s glorious capital.
Doubles from £102, room only
Paris
Hôtel Léopold
Despite its reputation for luxury, Paris has a surprising cache of chic and cheap stays – if you know where to look. Recent arrival Hôtel Léopold is one of them. From its welcoming coffee and cocktail bar stocked with books about the neighbourhood to the 40 voguish rooms, this Montparnasse address has echoes of the Roaring Twenties – tobacco velvet, art nouveau patterns, art deco silhouettes – the heyday of this bohemian arrondissement, when Josephine Baker, Picasso, Modigliani, Baudelaire, Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds all flitted about its legendary bistros.
Doubles from £126, room only
Rome
Condominio Monti
Converted from an early 1900s apartment block in Rome’s boho Monti neighbourhood by local design practice Studio Tamat, this is a refreshingly modern spot in the Eternal City. Past the unassuming façade, the green and gold lobby is welcoming, and unfussy rooms have bolts of colour in the textiles, art-deco lighting and painted accent walls. Breakfast is served on the neat roof terrace overlooking the ancient rooftops.
Doubles from £83, room only
Stockholm
Hotel Ruth, Vasastan
This indie boutique hotel opened a few years ago in the smart neighbourhood of Vasastan – a restaurant-packed enclave away from the tourist hotspots but still only a half-hour walk from Gamla Stan (the old town). Flor Matbar, its street-level Nordic-Mediterranean restaurant and open-til-midnight bar, draws a crowd of locals as well as guests. Created and run by the Pettersson family, its individual personality shines through, in homely rooms that marry floral textiles and soft shades with playful details. A rare affordable gem in this city.
Doubles from £137, room only. Read our full hotel review here
Venice
La Calcina
Rose-pink La Calcina sits plum on the Giudecca canal in Dorsoduro, with a floating restaurant out the front. John Ruskin wrote The Stones of Venice while staying here in 1877 and though some things have been updated since then, the hotel remains atmospherically old-fashioned, favouring rococo lighting and velvet damasks in the Baroque jewel tones of Carnevale. Just the ticket for your own Grand Tour.
Doubles from £100, B&B. Read our full hotel review here
Amsterdam
Sweets
For weekenders keen to throw themselves into the local culture, there’s nowhere more immersive than Sweets – one-of-a-kind stays in reimagined bridge houses around the city. A local creative collective has transformed 23 disused bridgekeepers’ cabins into unique suites, staying true to the architectural heritage of each, which ranges from 17th century to Amsterdam School modernist – with a 24th opening on the Amstel this year. They’re not particularly peaceful, but that’s not the point – you’re staying literally over the water, in a piece of Amsterdam’s history.
Bridge houses from £85, room only. Read our full hotel review here
Bruges
Hotel Malleberg
This delightful step-gabled house in the cobbled old town was the home of surrealist painter Rachel Baes until 1983 and still has the feel of an artful family home. Genial owners Eva and Niels have sympathetically updated the spaces and nine bedrooms in tasteful earthy tones. Unusually in a city fuelled by whipped cream, breakfast is entirely plant-based – but still a treat, with dairy-free cheese, chocolate and pancakes on offer – served in the atmospheric mediaeval cellar, where three original Baes paintings are hung.
Doubles from £118, room only. Read our full hotel review here
Lisbon
AlmaLusa Alfama
In a sunshine-yellow restored 12th-century building, the AlmaLusa is set on a square at the foot of Lisbon’s colourfully painted Alfama neighbourhood. Its 25 rooms are natural and understatedly elegant, and the best of them overlook the Tagus River. Downstairs, Delfina Café serves up everything from flaky breakfast pastéis de nata to Portuguese tapas, seafood and cocktails, on the sunny terrace out front.
Doubles from £103, B&B. Read our full hotel review here
Seville
Cristine Bedfor Sevilla
A sense of theatre has been restored at the Cristine Bedfor, created out of a tumbledown theatre designed in Mudéjar style by the architect of the city’s Plaza de España. This exquisite boutique hotel in Seville’s Unesco-listed old town honours Sevillian heritage, from Lorenzo Castillo’s bold interiors echoing the decoration of Mudéjar palaces – scalloped arches, star lanterns, zellij-tiled rooftop plunge pool – to the excellent modern Andalusian dishes served up on the colonnaded gallery.
Doubles from £127, room only
Florence
Loggiato Dei Serviti
A Renaissance monastery on Florence’s splendid Piazza della Santissima Annunziata is the hallowed setting for Loggiato Dei Serviti. Within, all is faded-grandeur romance: vaulted and embellished ceilings, antique furniture, canopied beds in rooms, some of which have views of the Duomo. Just when you thought your heart could not get any fuller, music concerts sometimes take place in the piazza outside.
Doubles from £85, B&B. Read our full hotel review here
Copenhagen
Coco Hotel
This chic hotel in Copenhagen’s fashionable Vesterbro neighbourhood is a temple to Danish sensibilities, from design (pared back, warm tones, natural woods, sensational chairs) to sustainability (it’s plastic-free, solar-powered and self-sufficient). Coco is the first hotel by the Copenhagen Food Collective, the restaurant group behind neighbouring Olise; the hotel’s own Coco Café & Bar buzzes with locals and guests from early morning to late at night, with tables spilling into the plant-filled courtyard.
Doubles from £132, room only. Read our full hotel review here
Berlin
Michelberger Hotel
Staying at the Michelberger is the quintessential East Berlin hipster experience. Set in a former factory in gallery-packed Friedrichshain, its lofty midcentury-modern spaces host live performances by visiting bands and artists, food pop-ups, and free Saturday yoga. The metro-tiled restaurant utilises organic produce from the hotel’s own farm and bread from the in-house bakery; a cinema shows art-house films, while the courtyard buzzes year-round with a local crowd and live DJs (there are firepits and a barrel sauna in colder months). Rooms vary wildly, from monastic Cosy up to family-size Hideout. A genuine playground for creatives.
Doubles from £95, room only. Read our full hotel review here
Barcelona
Hotel Pulitzer Barcelona
Luis and Javier Roig were born and raised in Barcelona’s Regina hotel in the 1960s, owned by their father. In 2004 they pooled their inherent hospitality know-how to create a hotel of their own: the beautiful Hotel Pulitzer, in a bohemian corner of the old town, right in the thick of things (Gaudí’s palaces, MACBA, the Rambla and La Boqueria market are all on the doorstep). Food is a treat here, from breakfast in the Greenhouse’s palm-filled patio and lunch in the lobby restaurant to tapas, music and sundowners on the roof terrace.
Doubles from £118, room only. Read our full hotel review here
Budapest
Brody House
This eccentric hideaway in a restored Neoclassical building was once home and studios to a bunch of artist friends of the owners, who decorated each of the eight unique bedrooms when Brody House was reborn as a hotel. It remains homely and charmingly rough around the edges, with raw-plaster walls and bright-painted mismatched chairs. Suppers are served Thursday-Saturday, accompanied by live music. It’s located in the hip Palace District, strolling distance from independent galleries, reimagined palaces and the ruin bars of the Jewish Quarter.
Doubles from £100, room only (min two-night stay). Read our full hotel review here
Athens
The Editor
The 1930s publishing house reincarnated as The Editor informs every detail of its new identity. You’ll find wide-open spaces, clean lines, white walls and lots of wood, with graphic prints utilising typesetting motifs above the modernist beds in the 40 large rooms. It’s brilliantly located in the centre, a few minutes’ walk from the vibrant neighbourhoods of Psirri and Monastiraki, with views of the Acropolis from top-floor café Stories.
Doubles from £125, room only. Read our full hotel review here
Porto
Rosa Et Al Townhouse
Siblings Patricia and Emanuel de Sousa welcome guests into their relaxed, personable seven-suite hotel in the artsy Cedofeita quarter as though into their own home. They’re very much hands-on: preparing three-course brunches, hosting cookery classes and supper clubs, lending bikes. Architect-turned-chef Emanuel won awards for his restoration of the townhouse, which has six beautiful, whitewashed rooms decorated with vintage finds and mid-century furniture, plus a verdant little garden out the back.
Doubles from £103 B&B
London
The Windmill Clapham Common
It’s not hard to find a hotel in London for under £150, but decent ones are vanishingly rare. Consider switching the busy centre for a leafy neighbourhood instead, such as Clapham Common, where the Windmill offers the best of all worlds: an elevated pub with rooms in an arboreal setting, with outdoor tables and stylish bedrooms that have distinct shades of Soho Home – only a 15-minute tube ride into the West End.
Doubles from £124, room only. Read our full hotel review here
Prague
Hotel U Prince
This beautiful house on the old town square – originally a mediaeval pharmacy – has lived through many eras, evident in its architecture: Baroque façade, gothic stone archways, art nouveau detailing in its antique-filled rooms. There are four bars and restaurants, from the rooftop bar overlooking Prague’s countless spires, down to the cellar Black Angel’s Bar, a throwback to 1930s prohibition, where beers are served at communal wooden tables.
Doubles from £90, room only. Read our full hotel review here
Dublin
Buswells Hotel, St Stephen’s Green
Dublin has loads of trendy hotels with lively bars. But if you’re more interested in the Old Library and Book of Kells than Guinness and singalongs, or just want a quiet central spot to weave home to at night, then three-star Buswells offers traditional Irish comfort in an elegant Georgian building. It’s located a stone’s throw from Trinity College and Temple Bar and is steadfastly old-fashioned, with swagged curtains, chandeliers and afternoon tea. It also has its own pub-like bar, albeit quieter.
Singles from £94, room only, or £108, B&B. Read our full hotel review here
Vienna
Die Josefine
Storytelling is taken literally at this Mariahilf hotel, an homage to the character of exiled aristocrat Josephine de Bourblanc, who holed up here in the Jazz Age. Inside it’s 1920s opulence from feathered head to toe: deep purple walls and boudoir-pink bedrooms, bergère art-deco beds and crystal empire chandeliers. Hangouts include Barfly’s, a basement club in jewel-coloured velvets; and listening library Phonotek, with its wall of jazz vinyl to pop on the turntable.
Doubles from £111