01 · Art Hotels
The Okura Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan
The 1962 lobby was taken apart, measured and built again inside a tower opened in 2019
Five-sided lantern shades hang low over the lobby floor, each one made of paper panels set in a frame. Below them the chairs and low tables stand in groups of five, arranged like petals around a centre. Dark wooden screens repeat a plum-blossom lattice along the walls, and the table tops are finished in lacquer.
The hotel opened in 1962 to a design by Yoshiro Taniguchi and his team. The original main building came down in 2015, and the site reopened in 2019 as two connected parts: a tall tower of guest floors and a much lower wing beside it. The old lobby was rebuilt at the base of the tower, with its ceiling height, screens and seating plan carried over.
The hotel sits on a slope in Toranomon, in the embassy quarter south of the Imperial Palace. Okura Museum of Art stands across the drive in a 1927 building with a tiled roof. The street is wide, quiet and lined with trees, and the towers of Kamiyacho and Roppongi close the view to the south.
Last gone over · June 2026
Three distances, one hotel: none of it is a promise about a stay. We work from published sources and say so plainly; the month at the foot of the page is when we last went over them.