The new luxury hotel brings Italian extravagance to Japan’s buzzing capital and invites guests to take it all in—from more than 40 floors above the city
For the sophisticated traveller, the words “Bulgari Hotel” typically conjure images of glamour marked by Italian marble walls, black granite floors and high ceilings. Bulgari Hotel Tokyo, which opened in April 2023, honours that lavish vision—with a Japanese twist.
The hotel is the latest addition to the Bulgari Hotels & Resorts Collection, through which Bulgari has left its Italian imprint across destinations like Bali, Dubai, Beijing and Paris. In each city, the luxury brand selects the setting of its property with a jeweller’s precision, and so the first Bulgari Hotel in Japan impresses with its address alone: it crowns Tokyo Midtown Yaesu, a shiny new skyscraper that towers over the Yaesu district in Chuo City.
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Silvio Ursini, group executive vice president of Bulgari Hotels & Resorts, lists the hotel’s nearby attractions with pride: “You have the Tokyo Imperial Palace, Nihonbashi, Otemachi, Marunouchi and Ginza. So you can actually walk for great shopping experiences, history and nature.” To venture any farther, guests can cross the street from the hotel to Tokyo Station and hop on a train or a bus—all in a matter of minutes. Not that Bulgari Hotel Tokyo makes it tempting to leave in the first place.
First Impressions
From the moment I arrived upon the distinctively Roman cobblestones that line the hidden street along the hotel’s ground floor lobby, I felt the promise of la dolce vita. The lobby itself is a spectacle, boasting a whole wall in gleaming green marble (from Italy, of course). Still, it was a modest prelude to the dazzling display of good taste that awaited me at the hotel’s main lobby on the 40th floor.
The main lobby and the adjacent lounge bear many signature touches of a Bulgari Hotel: the eight-pointed star that can be found at the entrance of all Bulgari boutiques and hotels; the vintage portraits of fashion icons like Monica Vitti wearing Bulgari jewels; and sleek furniture from Italian designer brands like Maxalto, B&B and Flexform.