"Perfectly located in the heart of Quebec’s Old Port across the street from the Museum of Civilization, this 60-room boutique inhabits a 19th-century bank building but sheds any trace of colonial pretense. The lobby is a welcome breath of modernity, with limestone walls and a walnut ceiling. The rooms themselves, which take up the building’s top four floors (the rest is rented out as office space), offer loft-like splendor: a walnut platform bed swathed in a puffy white duvet sits beneath 15-foot ceilings. Corridors, by contrast, are dimly lit and the illuminated room numbers change color to indicate whether housekeeping should come in (green) or keep out (red). The intimate scale and finish give the hotel a distinctly personal feel, but smallness is not without its price. There’s just one cozy Italian restaurant on the ground floor as well as a café—and though the staff is friendly and helpful, at times it feels as though the entire hotel is being manned by a single person. —Todd Plummer"
