Maison Wukang, Shanghai

We arrived under the famous canopy of Wukang Road, where the plane trees knit overhead so densely that the light falls in coins. Maison Wukang occupies a 1932 garden villa set back behind a low wall and a wrought-iron gate, the kind of house that Shanghai built when it still called itself the Paris of the East. The restoration is reverent: terrazzo floors buffed to a soft sheen, a curved staircase with its original brass balustrade, and a scent of beeswax and old paper. A pot of jasmine tea waited on the lobby's marble console. Outside, the whole theatre of the Concession, couples photographing the Wukang Mansion, drifted past the gate.

The room

We took the Plane Tree Suite on the second floor, a generous thirty-eight square metres with a small balcony that hovered right inside the canopy. The bed faced a pair of full-height casement windows, their ironwork original, repainted a deep bottle green. Walls are lime-plastered in a warm bone tone; the parquet is the building's own, sanded and re-laid. A freestanding tub sits in the bedroom beneath a brass swan-neck tap. Furniture is a quiet conversation between 1930s pieces and new oak commissions. The only modern intrusion is a hidden Marshall speaker. Lying in the bath at dusk, watching the leaves move against the glass, we understood why people never leave this neighbourhood.

Few hotels frame their city as honestly as this one frames the plane trees of Wukang Road.The Suite Edit

Service & food

The staff are young, multilingual and genuinely fond of the building, full of stories about the writer who supposedly lived here. Breakfast is served in the glassed-in former conservatory: shengjianbao crisped to order, a bowl of soy milk, good flat whites from a Yongkang Road roaster. There is no grand restaurant, but a tiny evening kitchen sends up Jiangnan small plates, the drunken chicken and the smoked fish both excellent. The highlight is theatre as much as drink: at six, a brass cart laden with bitters and a single perfect ice block is wheeled to your room, and a negroni is built at your balcony rail while the street below turns golden.

The verdict

Maison Wukang is for the romantic and the design-literate, anyone who wants to walk out of the door into the most beautiful streets in Shanghai. Couples will be in heaven; it is not built for children, and the staircase makes it tricky for anyone with mobility needs, as there is no lift to the upper floors. The honest caveat is the address's own popularity: the corner of Wukang and Huaihai is now a genuine tourist magnet, and weekend crowds can press against the gate until evening. Retreat inside, draw the casements, and the noise of a city of millions simply evaporates.