Red velvet, gold leaf, a gilded mammoth in the lobby, and rooms restrained enough to honour the spectacle.
The Faena Hotel Miami Beach occupies the restored Saxony, a 1948 art deco landmark on Collins Avenue at 32nd Street, and the property has been rebuilt at a cost that the owner has never publicly disclosed but that is visible in every surface. The interiors were designed by Alan Faena with Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin, the husband-and-wife team responsible for The Great Gatsby. The lobby's central conceit is a Damien Hirst gilded woolly mammoth skeleton in a vitrine. The corridors are lined with red velvet. The ceilings are murals. None of this is subtle, and that is the point.
The 179 rooms occupy the original Saxony tower and a discreet new oceanfront wing. The design palette is calmer than the public spaces, soft creams and pale blues, white-painted bamboo, and oversized bathrooms in honey marble. Most rooms have furnished balconies; the corner junior suites and oceanfront premier rooms have the views that justify the rates. The Imperial Suite, on the top floor, is a multi-bedroom apartment with a private terrace that looks straight onto the Atlantic.
The food and beverage programme is the most theatrical in Miami. Los Fuegos by Argentine chef Francis Mallmann is the marquee restaurant, open-fire grilling, gaucho asados on Sundays, the kind of meal that turns a hotel stay into a story. Pao by Paul Qui occupies a separate dining room beneath the mammoth. The Living Room serves cocktails to a crowd that arrives for the room itself; the Saxony Bar is the late-night scene. The cabaret, Faena Theater, is a 150-seat horseshoe modeled on a 1920s European opera house and presents shows that draw a paying-non-guest audience.
Service operates at the Forbes Five-Star level the property holds. The beach service, by which is meant cold towels, branded sunscreen, fruit, and a personal beach butler who appears before you have decided you need anything, is the standard against which other Miami hotels are measured. The Tierra Santa Healing House spa runs a full programme of treatments with a Latin American sensibility; the Faena Theater publishes a separate calendar; and the 22,000-square-foot pool deck delivers an experience that is itself worth a stay.
Faena's combination of theatricality and intimacy makes it the most quietly romantic hotel in Miami. The Tree of Life bar, the candlelit beach dinners, the cabaret as a private spectacle, all of it lends a honeymoon the cinematic dimension that most Miami hotels cannot deliver. The corner junior suites with ocean view face the rising sun directly; the rooms have furnished balconies that suit a long, slow morning of breakfast in private. For the milestone version of the same trip, the Faena Spa's hammam ritual is the most ambitious treatment in the city. Other honeymoon hotels →
Rates from $1,046/night. Check availability on Faena.com.
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