Hotel Skeppsholmen

It's a place of contradictions: a country house in the middle of Stockholm, a historical landmark filled with contemporary art, a buzzy hotspot with an aura of timelessness.

What better place could there be to welcome a group of friends long separated? We were eager to be reunited, but apprehensive too. How would it feel to be together after so long? But the instant we saw each other at the waterfront, everything came flooding back. We piled into a boat and sailed out over the archipelago. Soon we had fallen back into that old rhythm, sharing stories and old jokes, and making up for lost time. The Baltic air cooled but we stayed warm in a wash of laughter and memories as the sun began to set over the archipelago.

On a small bucolic island in the center of Stockholm, Hotel Skeppsholmen is a sophisticated eco-friendly cultural hub set in a landmarked pair of pale-yellow 17th-century barracks that were built to house Sweden’s Royal Marines. The kind of place that can’t help but bring people together, Skeppsholmen melds city and countryside, historicity and relaxed contemporary luxury, offering the very best of Swedish cuisine, art, and design and partnering with iconic brands such as Acne and Byredo. Skeppsholmen’s lush natural surroundings are complemented by urban attractions like the renowned Swedish Museum of Modern Art and the fascinating Swedish Museum of Architecture, as well as the area’s gorgeous antique ships and waterfront restaurants.

“It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.”
Marlene Dietrich

At the age of 27, Alessandro Catenacci made the deal of a lifetime, purchasing a Stockholm-based restaurant portfolio in 1987 at a price far below its worth. Since then, he’s grown Nobis Group into an unrivaled hospitality empire, including some of the top restaurants, nightspots, and boutique hotels in Stockholm. His Italian name may reveal his Roman origins, but a distinctly Scandinavian sense of luxury is obvious in everything Catenacci does, from Hotel Skeppsholmen to the legendary Café Opera nightclub. Most of all he hopes to offer guests places where they can feel as comfortable and humbly self-assured as he is. What really matters, he says, “is the personality you can offer.”