Hotel Franq
RELAIS & CHÂTEAUX
|| Hotel Franq: A historical bank that turned into a beautiful hotel ||
Visit the city of silver and diamonds: Antwerp. Did you know that this city is filled with a marvellous history of Century old Diamond District houses, thousands of diamond cutters, traders and polishers? The moment you will arrivé at the Central station of Antwerp you are going to look at every corner of the walls and ceiling. There are so many details of this ancient old architecture to see. Just as in one of the oldest hotels in Antwerp: Hotel Franq. We visited this hotel during August. It’s one of the participating hotels in our project of the 'Global Collection: Beautiful Stays'. In this article I will share why this would be a great choice for when you will visit Antwerp, the city of diamonds and silver!
Written by: Stephanie Gabriella
The concept
Hotel Franq is a former bank and when you enter this hotel for the first time without knowing this, you wouldn’t guess that right away. For us this was definitely a pleasant surprise, as we admire discovering hidden meanings and aspects of the hotels we visit. If you would like to see the safe, you can ask to have a look at it. It's incredible to see how a former bank has completely turned into an ashtonishing hotel.
Wander around Hotel Franq and you will whitness hints and touches of marble, mixed with bright colored interior and beautiful statues. You will also see various of paintings displayed throughout the hotel lobby and mulptiple areas.
The rooms
In total Hotel Franq has 5 different type of rooms. The rooms you can choose of are the following: Cozy, Classic and Deluxe Rooms or Junior and Luxury suites. The sizes of the rooms are all different and the prices of the room start from €174,00. However, you can book yourself one of these rooms, starting from 17m2. When we stayed at Hotel Franq we were enjoying a delightful stay at their 'Deluxe Room'. This rooms had a very fond lighting and it was spacious, 30m2. After a pleasent dinner, we went back to our room to take a nice and warm bath and enjoy the rest of our evening in our room.
The food
When you are staying in Hotel Franq you can choose out of two places to have dinner, inside of the hotel. You can have dinner at their restaurant or at the ‘Franq Gastrobar’. We loved having dinner at their Gastrobar. Both areas have a splendid Interior. However, it truly depends on your taste preference. Their restaurant has a lot of fish dishes and both Joe and I are very picky eaters when it comes to fish. For those who like fish dishes, this will be an excellent choice. We chose to have dinner in their Gastrobar where we enjoyed a delicious creamy truffle parmezaan pasta. The taste of it was really nice. We haven’t tried any other pasta in Antwerp, so for now I can highly recommend to stay in and get yourself a very tasty pasta in Franq Gastrobar. We also ordered a burrata, however this was only ‘burrata mouse'. We didn’t expect this, because we are used to get a full burrata when ordering a burrata. This mouse is a great choice for customers who are not fond of that much cheese, as a regular burrata would have.
The service
When we arrived at Hotel Franq, we were welcomed with a glass of prosseco and had a small conversation with their receptionist. After our check in, our room was ready to enter. When I told the manager of the restaurant that I had fish allergies, they offered me different kind of dishes, which was very thoughtful. What makes them special, is that both in the hotel and restaurant you can always let them know if you would like changes or any special requests. Would you like to see more facilities?
The location
When we travelled to Antwerp we decided to take an Uber to the hotel, because it was raining a lot. We arrived on the Central Station of Antwerp and the ride took us about 20 minutes by car. However, when we headed back on our return to get our train to Amsterdam, we decided to walk and this takes you around 14 minutes. Therefore, if the weather is nice, we highly recommend to take walk instead of a taxi/uber.
Things around Hotel Franq:
Antwerp international airport 5KM
Metro Meir 0,3KM
Diamonds museum 800m
Grote markt Antwerpen/ Big marker Antwerp 450m
Satay 100 m
Bubble waffle 100 m
Urban wraps 100m
Barbouf 100 m
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