Art Hotel Luise

Well-priced, well-placed and wonderfully weird: a budget hotel whose artist-created rooms are a gallery of quirky design

Berlin has long been at the cutting edge of wacky art, but this place takes the biscuit. You can drink spritzers under a giant horse's head, or smoke beside a psychedelic rainbow of wall. You can sleep in a pseudo aircraft cabin on a tilting mattress as if you're coming in to land, or clamber into an oversized bed to make you feel like a kid again. Artists of every ilk have left their mark – provocative female nudes, neon glows, comic graffiti, even an arrangement of dog bowls – on the walls of most rooms, and a portion of the cost goes to their royalties. If that all sounds too ridiculous, you can choose a clean, modern room with German bathroom technology and triple glazed windows (you'll need it, as these rooms look onto a railway).

Either way, you get friendly young staff, cheap drinks from the lobby vending machine, a shady interior court and vaulted restaurant next door. Best of all, you can step out of the dusty pink palais, turn right – across the Spree – and be at the Reichstag in 5 minutes flat, or the Brandenburg gate in 10.

Highs

• No other hotel in this price range boasts such a prime location: you can walk to all the main sites, or catch a boat to Museum Island if you prefer
• We loved the art rooms, most of which are quirky and humorous without being uncomfortable (all have a good shower cabinet and excellent mattresses)
• There's a range of room rates to suit all pockets, from shared-bathroom singles to two-room suites, and even an attic dorm for impoverished artists
• The Tegel airport bus stops 1 minute away, so if you're coming for a week-end you can minimise travel time

Lows

• The art rooms vary hugely, and are very much a matter of taste; if you book early enough you can choose your favourite (see our full list of rooms)
• The new rooms are in a rear wing which looks directly – and I mean directly – onto the railway line outside Friedrichstrasse station; though the windows do their Teutonic best, some rumbling is inevitable
• Breakfast is not included, but you get a rich spread of sweet and savoury, pastries and cooked