“Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past”, wrote James Joyce in his literary masterpiece Ulysses, a piece of advice that also reverberates in the narrative-driven Ulysses hotel in Baltimore where the past surges through the looking glass into the present. Occupying an early 20th century building in Mount Vernon, a picturesque neighbourhood filled with stately mansions, the 116-room hotel is layered with arcane cultural references, from Art Deco movie palaces and Victorian-era interiors, to 1920s ocean liners and steam trains, to the cinematic language of Baltimore icon John Waters, welcoming guests into an almost vaudevillian, equal parts delightfully campy and elegantly classical environment inspired by Baltimore’s contradictions and eccentricities.
The fourth property of New York-based hotelier and design studio Ash, Ulysses’ idiosyncratic design follows the brand’s playbook whereby each hotel takes its cues as much from the city and historic building it resides in as from the creative team’s favourite films and artworks. Brimming with unexpected, lavish details, along with an all-day café, and two cocktail bars, plus a bespoke fragrance, the hotel uncannily transports guests into a stylized world full of drama, mystery and playfulness.