You arrive at what appears to be a 15th-century Gothic church on a quiet square in Maastricht’s old town. Stone walls. Lancet windows. The kind of medieval architecture that tends to house museums or the occasional concert. Then you walk through the entrance, an illuminated orange copper tunnel designed by Ingo Maurer, and realize this is very much not a church anymore. Or rather, it’s still a church. But now it’s also a five-star design hotel where contemporary art installations float beneath vaulted ceilings and Philippe Starck furniture sits alongside original stained glass. The Kruisherenhotel is what happens when someone with genuine vision takes a 15th-century monastery and refuses to let history be the only story being told.
The building dates to 1440, when land was donated to the Order of the Holy Cross, the Crutched Friars, locally known as the Kruisheren, to build a monastery and adjoining church. They lived here until 1797, when the French Revolution had other ideas about monasteries in general. The building became military barracks. Then, over the following two centuries, it served as an agricultural research station, a temporary parish church, and several other utilitarian functions that kept it standing but didn’t do much for its soul. Enter Camille Oostwegel Sr., whose family has been quietly transforming historic properties across the Netherlands into exceptional hotels since the 1960s. The transformation began in 2000, led by Dutch interior designer Henk Vos, and the result is a property that has won the Dutch Hotel Award, joined Design Hotels, and become the most architecturally significant place to stay in Maastricht.
Walking through the hotel feels like moving between centuries. The nave of the Gothic church now serves as the soaring lobby and restaurant space, with the original stone walls, stained glass windows, and ribbed vaulting intact. But suspended within this medieval envelope is an entirely modern mezzanine structure holding Spencer’s Restaurant, which appears to float mid-air in the church’s vast vertical space. In the former chancel where the altar once stood, a glass wine vault rises like a contemporary sculpture, housing the Rouge & Blanc wine bar. Concrete seating landscapes by German artist Ingo Maurer occupy the inner courtyard, lit from within at night, turning the old cloister into something that feels more like an installation at a Basel art fair than a monastery garden.
The 60 rooms are spread throughout the former monks’ quarters, which means no two are remotely alike. Some occupy the original cloister cells and retain exposed wooden beams, lancet windows, and slanted ceilings that make you feel like you’re sleeping in a medieval manuscript illumination. Others are entirely contemporary, with floor-to-ceiling windows, modern art on the walls, and bathrooms finished in sleek stone and glass. A few have original stained glass. One room features a modern African sculpture in the bedroom and an elf-stemmed chair in the bathroom, because why not. The hotel has leaned into the fact that historic architecture doesn’t lend itself to cookie-cutter room design, and the result is that every stay feels genuinely different depending on which room you’re assigned.
This variability is worth noting upfront. If you care deeply about which specific room you get, and at a five-star property, you probably should, it’s worth calling ahead to discuss options. Some rooms are showstoppers. Some are perfectly lovely but less dramatic. The hotel is transparent about this if you ask, but it’s not always obvious from the booking photos which category you’re landing in.
Spencer’s Restaurant occupies that floating mezzanine in the church nave, which makes every meal feel like a bit of theatre. The kitchen, led by Chef de Cuisine Tim Signet, runs a farm-to-table concept with subtle international influences dishes that showcase regional Limburg produce but don’t feel trapped by it. Think French technique applied to Dutch ingredients, with enough seasonality that the menu shifts genuinely and often. Breakfast here, with morning light streaming through 600-year-old stained glass, is one of those travel experiences that makes you glad you got on the plane. Dinner is more formal but not stuffy, served in a space where you’re constantly aware of the vaulted ceiling soaring somewhere far above your head.
Spencer’s Bar, located in the lobby alcoves beneath the restaurant, handles lunch, cocktails, and the kind of casual drop-in service that makes a hotel feel like it belongs to the neighborhood, not just to overnight guests. The Pandhof terrace, hidden in the monastery’s inner courtyard, opens in good weather and immediately becomes the best outdoor dining spot in central Maastricht. And the Rouge & Blanc wine bar, tucked into the former chancel with that striking glass vault overhead, is where you go when you want a serious bottle and a quiet conversation in a space that looks like nothing else in the Netherlands.
Maastricht itself deserves the trip. It’s one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands, with Roman foundations, medieval cobblestone streets, and a cultural identity that feels distinctly less Dutch and more cosmopolitan-European. The city sits at the point where the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany converge, and that geographic position has given it a hybrid character, part Flemish, part French, part something entirely its own. The Vrijthof square is five minutes’ walk from the hotel. The Bonnefanten Museum, a striking contemporary art museum designed by Aldo Rossi, is fifteen minutes on foot. The entire historic centre is compact, walkable, and filled with the kind of independent shops and cafés that suggest a city confident enough in its own appeal not to need multinational chains.
The hotel is part of the Oostwegel Collection, which also includes Château Neercanne (a Michelin-starred castle restaurant built into limestone caves) and Château St. Gerlach (a country estate hotel fifteen minutes outside the city). All three properties share a philosophy: take historic buildings that deserve to exist, invest the time and resources to do the transformation properly, and resist the urge to turn them into boutique hotel clichés. The Kruisherenhotel is a member of Design Hotels, which is both an affiliation and an accurate description. This is design-forward hospitality in a way that actually means something.
Getting there is straightforward. Maastricht is two hours forty-five minutes from Amsterdam by car or train, ninety minutes from Brussels, and Maastricht Aachen Airport (a small regional airport) is just ten minutes away for those flying in from select European cities. The hotel offers valet parking, which in a medieval city center where parking is otherwise a nightmare, is worth every euro. From the train station, you can walk to the hotel in about twenty minutes, or take a bus to the Market and walk five more.
This is not a hotel for people who want things to look reassuringly the same everywhere they travel. It’s for people who understand that a building with six centuries of history is always going to be a bit unpredictable, and that the unpredictability is the whole point. It’s for travelers who get excited about seeing contemporary art juxtaposed with Gothic architecture in ways that shouldn’t work but absolutely do. And it’s for anyone who has ever walked into a beautiful old building and thought, “Someone should turn this into a hotel,” then wondered what that would actually look like if done properly.
This is what it looks like.
The Details:
- 60 rooms and suites, each individually designed in former monastery cloisters
- 15th-century Gothic church and monastery transformed by designer Henk Vos
- Spencer’s Restaurant on floating mezzanine in church nave, seasonal farm-to-table menu
- Spencer’s Bar for lunch, cocktails, and casual dining
- Rouge & Blanc wine bar in former chancel with glass wine vault
- Pandhof terrace in monastery courtyard (seasonal)
- Art installations by Ingo Maurer, furniture by Philippe Starck, Le Corbusier, Marc Newson
- Member of Design Hotels, Dutch Hotel Award 2017
- Located in Maastricht’s historic center, walkable to Vrijthof square and Bonnefanten Museum
- Valet parking available
- 2h 45min from Amsterdam, 1h 30min from Brussels by car/train
