Hotel Liberty hotel review - Offenburg, Germany

A working prison less than a decade ago, the two sturdy red sandstone buildings in Germany’s southern Rhineland have now been transformed into the 38-room Hotel Liberty, featuring a luxurious fit-out including pieces by Patricia Urquiola and Antonio Citterio for Axor.

The prison’s former exercise yard is now covered by a linking glass ‘unbuilding’ from Bodensee-based designers Knoblauch and houses the hotel’s kitchen. Here, the open grill, topped with a defining brass hood, is at the heart of Wasser & Brot, the restaurant led by Lyon-born chef Jeremy Biasiol who was tutored by Alain Ducasse. Even the house salad is a treat; a bed of onion confit dusted with mushroom powder is ‘planted’ with an assortment of crunchy vegetables, while fusions of modernity see butternut velouté topped with ham foam; and a lacy ‘fascinator’ of squid ink decorating a fish course.