Mumbai · Apollo Bunder, Colaba
On Apollo Bunder since 1903, with the Gateway of India across the road.
You arrive at Apollo Bunder with the Gateway of India on one side and the red Florentine dome on the other, and the two have been arguing since 1924 about which of them is the front door. The Palace was here 21 years first. Through the doors the noise of Colaba stops, and what replaces it is marble, the smell of tuberose, and a cantilevered staircase climbing 4 floors with nothing visible holding it up.
The Palace wing rooms face either the harbour or the courtyard, and both are worth asking for. Dark mahogany panelling, a claret bedspread, a violet velvet chair set square to the window — and at about 6 the light comes off the Arabian Sea and turns the whole room the colour of weak tea. The Tower rooms are plainer: ivory walls, a curved bronze headboard, a pierced screen dividing off the sitting area. They are also higher, so the water goes further.
The staff here have something no training programme produces. In November 2008 this building was attacked, and its people went back into it for their guests; a number of them did not come out. The hotel reopened and has never made a performance of any of it. What you meet is attention without ceremony. It has been open since 1903, and it has never once behaved as though it needed to prove anything.
J Wellness Circle. Ayurveda in its ritual form rather than its spa-menu form — a brass diya, a bowl of rose petals, a therapist who asks what you actually need before deciding what to do about it.
The Ballroom. Gold-leafed vaulting and cut-glass chandeliers, and a grand piano waiting on the stage at the far end. Most of the 20th century's visitors to Bombay passed through this room.
The Grand Staircase. A cantilevered stone flight rising through 4 floors of wrought-iron balustrade with nothing holding it up. Take it rather than the lift at least once.
The Palace Butlers. Palace wing rooms and every suite come with a butler — not a bell to ring, but a person who learns the shape of your day and gets in front of it.
The Pool. A scalloped sheet of water in the courtyard the Palace wraps around, bordered by the arched veranda and a line of cream-fringed umbrellas. You swim with the building over you on all 4 sides. Come early and you will have it.
The Palace wing is the 1903 building: heritage rooms, more character, more corridor. The Tower is the 1973 addition — quieter, higher, plainer, and better for a long stay or a light sleeper. They share everything else.
The Luxury Room, the Luxury Grande Room, City View and the Luxury Grande Room, Sea View are Palace wing rooms. For every other grade, tell the concierge which building you would rather be in and they will place you.
Sea view comes at 3 levels, each a different thing.
From a Luxury Grande Room, Sea View it arrives through a bay window you can sit in.
From a Taj Club Room, Sea View the Gateway sits directly beneath you.
In the Grande Luxury Suite, One Bedroom, Sea View it is the view from the whole 121 square metres. The city-facing version of each grade is the same size for less money. It looks over Colaba or into the courtyard around the pool — quieter, greener, and no worse a room. Take the sea for 2 nights. The courtyard wears better across a week.
The suites are in the Palace wing, and they are large enough to work in, eat in and receive in — which is what they were built for. Below suite level the rooms are comfortable rather than grand, so the step up to a suite here buys more than the step from one room to the next.
It has been open since 1903, and it has never once behaved as though it needed to prove anything.
Apollo Bunder
Colaba
Mumbai, Maharashtra 400001
India
Rates are quoted for your dates.
Room
33 m² · Sleeps 3
Interior — no window
The cheapest way to sleep inside the 1903 building, and what it costs you is daylight: these are the Palace's interior rooms and they have no window. It is 33 square metres — the same as the Grande a rung above — with a king bed, a writing desk, a fan turning under the cornice, and a small alcove off the bedroom with two chairs in it. Everything in it is lamplight, and you will sleep better than you have in a year.
Room
33 m² · Sleeps 3
City
The same 33 square metres as the Luxury Room, higher up and facing out over Colaba — which here is not a lesser view, only a different one. You look at the city the building was made for: the causeway, the roofs, and the crows coming off them at 6. Heritage fixtures, a marble bathroom, and a bay window deep enough to sit in. Ask for a corner room if one is free.
Room
33 m² · Sleeps 3
The Arabian Sea
It is 33 square metres on the mid floors of the Palace wing, and one thing decides it: the bay is a small room of its own. An arched opening off the bedroom, painted a colour the bedroom is not, a glass lantern hung at the centre of it, two chairs and a round table, and windows on 3 sides with the Arabian Sea behind them. The same floor area as the city-view room a rung below. Only the water changes.
Room
37 m² · Sleeps 2
City
It is 4 square metres more than the rooms below, on the high floors of the heritage wing, with a lounge at the end of the corridor. The Taj Club here is not the usual airport-lounge arrangement dropped into a hotel — it is a set of rooms in the 1903 building with a view down onto the Gateway, and breakfast in it is why people book this room a second time. Two guests only: the club rooms do not take a third bed.
Room
37 m² · Sleeps 2
Arabian Sea and the Gateway of India
The same club room turned through 90 degrees, and the 90 degrees is what you are paying for: the Gateway directly below, the harbour past it, and the light coming off the water into the room from about 4 in the afternoon. This is the photograph people have in mind when they book this hotel. It is worth knowing that the room is the same 37 square metres as the city-view club room, and not a metre more.
Suite
83 m² · Sleeps 3
City
The first suite with a door between the sitting room and the bed, and in a building this old that door is worth more than the metres. It is 83 square metres of the original house: panelled walls, a chandelier that is not a reproduction, and furniture that has been repaired rather than replaced. It faces the city. Take it if you want to live inside the building rather than look at the harbour from it.
Suite
70 m² · Sleeps 3
City
It is 70 square metres, and the smallest room in it is the reason to take it. The dining alcove is lacquered flat chrome yellow to the cornice, with a white jali screen filling one wall and a glass chandelier over a round table for 4 — a room to hold a breakfast in with the bedroom door shut. A sitting room, a bedroom, heritage décor, downtown Mumbai in the windows, and the Taj Club lounge from 7 in the morning until a quarter to midnight.
Suite
121 m² · Sleeps 4 + 1 child
Arabian Sea
The 1903 building at its least restrained: dark mahogany panelling, a claret silk bedspread, a violet velvet armchair at the window, and one of the hotel's own domes on the skyline outside it. It is 121 square metres with a separate sitting room and a butler by default. The corridors are long and the floors uneven in places — that is the building, not a fault.
Suite
121 m² · Sleeps 3 + 1 child
Harbour or the Gateway
Each of these is a different room, and which one you get is decided on the day: the Rajput, hung with Rajasthani miniatures; the Bell Tower Duplex, which runs over two floors inside the tower and has its own staircase; the Ravi Shankar, named for the man who stayed in it. What they share is that each was designed once, for itself, and none has been standardised since. Tell the concierge which you would like and they will tell you honestly whether it is free.
Suite
465 m² · Sleeps 4
The Gateway of India and the harbour
Named for the family that built the hotel, and the only room here that is genuinely a residence: 465 square metres, a drawing room that seats 20, a dining room that seats 12, two bedrooms, a private gym, and windows along the whole harbour front with the Gateway directly beneath them. It is let perhaps 100 nights a year, and what it costs is a conversation with the concierge rather than a number on a page.
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