The Circus Hotel is closing (for now...)

Looking forward while celebrating what we achieved

The process to find the perfect place to write the next chapter in The Circus story is underway, but as we reach the moment to close the doors on Rosenthaler Straße for the final time, we also wanted to look back at what this place has meant to us since we first opened in 2008. Over the eighteen years, the hotel has welcomed more than two million guests from more than 100 different countries. We have celebrated birthdays, engagements and weddings (including members of our team), and a good number of our guests have returned time and again to become our friends.

It has not always been easy. We survived a terrible fire one New Year’s morning caused by a celebratory firework that saw the entire hotel evacuated across the street into the hostel. Incredibly, within a couple of hours we were all having breakfast together back in the hotel. We had those lonely months during the pandemic, when we wondered at times when we would be able to welcome people back again.

Over the years we have had more than 200 people working for us, whether on reception or in the bar, in the kitchen or on the housekeeping and maintenance teams. We’ve hosted concerts and eyewitness history talks, literary prize-givings and press conferences. We’ve worked with lovely partners, including Common Ground, Codos, Lost My Voice, Love at First Bite and 100gramm bar. And in that time we were delighted that our guests’ positive experiences with us translated into a number one rating at Tripadvisor, lovely reviews and glowing mentions in the Guardian, the New York Times and elsewhere.

What else? We published five magazines, one book, a series of audio short stories based on the hotel and its surroundings, and hosted two writers-in-residence. We also organised so many tours and events to take our guests “behind the curtain” of Berlin, whether to historic sites of memory, backstage at the Opera House, to the Natural History Museum after hours or simply to our favourite ice cream spots in the city.

It feels a little sad to write this when we know that the place where all these things happened will soon be no more. But we are incredibly proud of what we have achieved at The Circus Hotel over the past eighteen years, as we moved from a budget hotel to a boutique hotel while maintaining the spirit of social travel and a welcoming atmosphere that has always been at the heart of what we do. Just because something ends, it doesn’t change the impact that it had (and continues to have) while it existed.

And the best bit is: it’s not all over yet. The Circus Hostel and The Circus Apartments will continue to welcome our guests from around the world in our own special way, and we are sure that we will soon have news about where this great adventure will take us. Next year will mark thirty years since the first Circus Hostel opened its doors, back in another century. Let’s see what our fourth decade has to offer…

We hope to see you in Berlin soon,

Katrin, Andreas, Andreas, Jim, Tilman, Christian and the entire Circus Hotel team