Hotels That Used to Be Banks: I Slept in a Bank Vault So You Know Where to Book
- Natalija Ugrina
- 3 hours ago
- 10 min read
There's a specific kind of thrill that hits when you walk into a hotel lobby and realize the floor under your feet used to be a bank floor. The marble is too grand for a place that just wants to sell you a room. The ceilings are too high. There's a vault door somewhere, repurposed into a bar or a walk-in closet or, if you're lucky, left standing exactly where it always was, just for the drama of it.
I didn't set out to become obsessed with hotels that used to be banks. It happened by accident, twice, in two completely different corners of the world — once in Miami, once in Stockholm — and by the second time, I knew I'd stumbled onto one of my favorite categories of hidden-gem travel.
Here's the thing about old banks. Before phones could hold your money, banks were built to prove they could be trusted with it. That meant marble quarried from three continents, ceilings you could fly a small plane through, brass everywhere, and vaults built like fortresses because, well, they were fortresses. Fast forward a century, mobile banking kills the need for that kind of real estate, and suddenly cities are full of these absurdly beautiful, structurally over-engineered buildings with nothing to do. Hoteliers figured out what to do with them. And travelers like us get to sleep inside the result.
Let me walk you through the two former-bank hotels I've stayed in myself, and then the growing global map of banks-turned-hotels you can check into right now — from Istanbul to Bucharest to a tiny town in New Mexico where you can literally sleep inside the old safe.
Why Old Banks Make Weirdly Perfect Hotels
Before I get into specific properties, it's worth pausing on why this trend of hotels that used to be banks works so well architecturally. Banks built between the late 1800s and the 1930s — the golden age of "prove you're solvent through architecture" — tend to share a few features that translate almost too perfectly into hospitality:
Soaring banking halls with skylights or glass ceilings, built to feel like a temple of commerce, that convert beautifully into restaurants or lobbies
Vaults and safe-deposit rooms, built with walls three feet thick, that make genuinely atmospheric bars, wine cellars, or (in one case below) a kids' bedroom
Teller counters and marble stations that architects love repurposing into check-in desks or bar tops
Central, prestigious downtown addresses, because a bank always wanted to be exactly where the money and power were, which is exactly where you want to stay on a trip
Put simply: banks were engineered to impress, and impressing people is the entire job of a great hotel. The conversion practically writes itself.
My Stays: A Bank in Miami and a Bank in Stockholm
Eurostars Langford, Miami — The Miami National Bank, 1925
My first taste of this whole rabbit hole was in downtown Miami, at what's now the Eurostars Langford (affiliate link). The building went up in 1925 as the Miami National Bank — later the City National Bank Building — a Beaux Arts stunner designed by architects Hampton and Ehmann, finished just before the hurricane that ended Miami's 1920s land boom. It's had a strange, glamorous life since: at one point it was owned by MGM film mogul Louis B. Mayer, and by 1989 it had landed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Downtown Miami doesn't get nearly the hotel attention that South Beach does, which honestly made staying here feel like being let in on a secret. Walking through the entrance, you're under the same arches and stonework that once told 1920s depositors "your money is safe here" — it's just that now it's telling you "your vacation is about to be very nice." Inside, the details are what got me: the original brass mailbox with its chute running up through the floors, elevator control panels that look like they belong in a museum, and touches throughout the rooms — like suitcase stands built to resemble old steamer trunks — that nod to the building's past without turning the whole place into a theme park. There's a rooftop bar that leans hard into Prohibition-era Miami glamour, which felt exactly right for a building that's older than Prohibition's repeal.
Bank Hotel, Stockholm — 1910, Multiple Banks, One Very Good Bar
My second stay was a world away in Stockholm's Östermalm district, at the aptly named Bank Hotel (affiliate link). This one is even more literal about its history — the building went up in 1910, designed by architect Thor Thorén in a style that blends Renaissance palace grandeur with early Art Deco, and it spent over a century as home to a rotating cast of banks: Södra Sverige Banking, Svenska Handelsbanken, Diskontobank, Wermlands Enskilda Bank. In between banking tenants it even did a stint as an exhibition hall and a library before finally reopening as a hotel in 2018.
You feel the banking history the second you push through the massive bronze double doors — genuinely one of the most dramatic hotel entrances I've experienced. The old banking hall, with its glass ceiling rising something like six meters overhead, is now the restaurant Bonnie's (yes, named for Bonnie and Clyde — a bank-robber joke I appreciated more than I probably should have). Downstairs, the hotel's Vault Rooms are literally inside the old vault space: cool, windowless, and strangely calming, like sleeping inside a very well-decorated bunker. There's also a semi-hidden nine-floor-up bar called Chambre Séparé, reachable through an unmarked door and a winding staircase, which is exactly the kind of "insider" detail I'm always chasing for content.
Two cities, two very different banking histories, and somehow the exact same feeling walking in: this used to be serious, and now it's fun.
Quick disclosure before we keep going: this post contains affiliate links. If you book through one of them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you — it's how I keep finding weird, wonderful, history-packed stays like these. I only feature hotels I'd genuinely recommend (or, as above, have stayed in myself).
More Hotels That Used to Be Banks, Around the World
Once you start looking, these conversions are everywhere. Here's the global roundup — the ones worth planning a trip around.
The Ned, London — The Midland Bank Headquarters, 1924
If there's a flagship property in this entire category, it's The Ned (affiliate link). Designed by Sir Edwin "Ned" Lutyens — the same architect behind much of New Delhi — as the headquarters of Midland Bank, the building sat empty for nearly a decade after HSBC absorbed Midland in 1992, until Soho House founder Nick Jones fell for it in 2012. The former banking hall, ringed by 92 green verdite columns, is now the reception. The old walk-in vault — famous enough to have appeared in the James Bond film Goldfinger — is now a late-night bar fittingly called The Vault.
Riggs Washington DC — The Bank of Presidents
Riggs National Bank earned its nickname, "the Bank of Presidents," by banking basically every U.S. president for over a century. Today it's Riggs Washington DC (affiliate link), where you can order a cocktail at Silver Lyan, tucked inside the original vault, or grab a coffee under the Corinthian columns at Café Riggs.
Hotel de Rome, Berlin — Dresdner Bank HQ, 1889
In Berlin's historic Bebelplatz, this neoclassical landmark was once one of four headquarters of Dresdner Bank, designed by Ludwig Heim in 1889. It survived WWII damage and a stint as part of the State Bank of the GDR before its current life as a Rocco Forte luxury hotel (affiliate link).
Bank Hotel Istanbul (Orientbank Hotel) — Voyvoda Street
Istanbul's Voyvoda Street was basically the Ottoman Empire's Wall Street, and this 19th-century bank building sits right in the middle of it, a short walk from the Galata Bridge. Now part of Design Hotels (affiliate link), it comes with a rooftop bar overlooking the Golden Horn — not a bad view for a former counting house.
The Marmorosch, Bucharest — Romania's Most Influential Bank
This one previously housed Banca Marmorosch Blank, once one of the most powerful banks in Romanian history. The belle époque building blends art nouveau and art deco details — sculpted columns, arched windows — now wrapped in a thoroughly modern Autograph Collection interior.
Originally home to the National Bank of the Republic, later the Continental Bank, this building's former banking hall is now the restaurant Bambara, complete with the original brass teller windows. The best detail, though, is downstairs: The Vault, a cocktail bar built directly into the old safe room.
Trinity Hotel, Carlsbad, New Mexico
For something smaller and stranger, there's the Trinity Hotel , a nine-room property inside the former First National Bank of Carlsbad. This one has a proper true-crime footnote: Sheriff Pat Garrett — the man who killed Billy the Kid — did business inside these walls. The old two-story safe, with three-foot-thick concrete walls, is now a guest room, and apparently kids fight over the chance to "sleep in the safe."
In Old Montreal, this boutique property — one of the city's pioneering boutique hotels when it opened in 2000 — occupies three 19th-century neoclassical buildings, including the former Bank du Peuple.
Over in Asia, this hotel includes historic suites built inside the former offices of the bank's director, with original wood paneling and coffered ceilings still intact — a small, quiet echo of colonial-era banking grandeur inside a thoroughly modern Singapore.
And in a fun full-circle moment for anyone who loved the Miami stay: Eurostars also runs a hotel in the middle of Lower Manhattan's Financial District — proof that this brand, at least, seems to have a genuine soft spot for old money buildings.
The Ernest Hotel, Bendigo, Australia — Gold Rush Bank, 1864
Two hours outside Melbourne, this ten-room boutique property occupies an 1864 bank from the height of Australia's gold rush era. The old banking chamber is now a cocktail bar, there's an underground cellar you can still explore, and — my favorite detail — a bullet hole in the wall dating
back to the gold rush days. Hard to beat that for a story over drinks.
Old Bank Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa
On St Georges Mall in Cape Town's city center, this boutique hotel occupies a building that operated as a Nedbank branch until fairly recently — recent enough that some visiting locals remember queuing there for banking, not room service. The design leans Afro-French, blending European architectural bones with African materials and color, and the original arched, floor-to-ceiling
windows still overlook the pedestrian mall below.
In Amsterdam, half of the W Amsterdam occupies the former Kas Bank headquarters, a national monument designed in 1908 and expanded over the following decades. True to classic bank-building form, it kept the vaults on the ground floor and basement and a monumental banking hall on
the first floor — now reworked into one of Amsterdam's flashier hotel interiors.
What to Look For When You Stay in a Former Bank
If you're planning your own crawl through hotels that used to be banks, here's what tends to make these stays memorable:
Vault bars. More often than not, the old safe becomes the coolest bar in the building. Ask where it is if it's not obvious.
Original teller counters or windows. A surprising number of properties keep these as design features in restaurants or reception areas.
The banking hall itself. This is almost always the most dramatic public room in the hotel — usually the restaurant, sometimes the lobby.
A house history sheet. Several of these hotels (Bank Hotel Stockholm included) put together a little booklet on the building's banking history. Always ask at check-in.
Historic plaques or landmark status. Many of these buildings — like the Miami National Bank building — are listed on national or local historic registers, which usually means there's a plaque with the building's original name and year, right near the entrance.
FAQ: Hotels That Used to Be Banks
What is the most famous hotel that used to be a bank? The Ned in London is probably the best-known example — it occupies the former Midland Bank headquarters, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and its old vault even appeared in the James Bond film Goldfinger.
Why are so many old bank buildings being turned into hotels? Bank buildings from the late 1800s through the 1930s were built with soaring ceilings, marble halls, and elaborate vaults meant to project trust and permanence. As online and mobile banking made that kind of real estate unnecessary, developers realized the same grandeur that once impressed depositors makes for spectacular hotel lobbies, restaurants, and bars.
Can you actually stay in an old bank vault? Yes — several hotels on this list, including Bank Hotel Stockholm and the Trinity Hotel in Carlsbad, New Mexico, have converted their original vaults into guest rooms. Others, like The Ned and the Kimpton Hotel Monaco, turned their vaults into bars instead.
Are these hotels expensive? It varies widely. Boutique properties like the Trinity Hotel in New Mexico are quite affordable, while flagship city properties like The Ned in London or Bank Hotel Stockholm sit at the luxury end. Booking through the links in this post is a good way to compare current rates.
Final Thought
What gets me about this whole category isn't just the marble or the vault doors, it's the plot twist: buildings engineered for suspicion and security, for keeping people out, have been quietly turned into some of the most welcoming places to stay in the world. Next time you check into a hotel with a lobby that feels a little too grand for its own good, ask the front desk what the building used to be. You might just be about to sleep where the safe used to sit.
Booked one of these hotels that used to be banks? Tag me — I want to see the vault doors.