From a Sanatorium to a luxury Hotel

In the mid-eighteenth century on the spot where our hotel stands today, there was a house called Zum Auge Gottes.

It was built in 1765. In 1903 Friederike Luithlen acquired the building for a joint ownership partnership and replaced it with a new build. In 1907/08 a private clinic was set up in the building to plans by Robert Oerley. This sanatorium was opened to patients in 1908.

At first it was called "The Luithlen Sanatorium". After a change of ownership it was renamed "The Auersperg Sanatorium".

On the mezzanine floor there were the manager’s and secretary’s offices and the outpatient clinics. On the floors above there were 34 hospital rooms, all with bathrooms – and this was revolutionary for the time - and an additional apartment and their own telephone extension. And, a salon and rooms for dining, reading, writing and smoking.

On the 4th floor there were two operating theatres, identifiable from the outside by two glass towers. Natural daylight was all they had; there was no provision for artificial lighting. During construction, a hot-water heating system was installed for the whole building. In 1964 the sanatorium was closed.

The Studentenförderungsstiftung (fund for student support) used the building as a student hostel and in the summer months it was a hotel.

In the course of the work undertaken to adapt the building, the roof area was remodelled and the former operating theatres with their glass domes and the glass porch had to be demolished.

---

Originally, the hotel had 70 rooms and suites. Our hotel, built in the year 1908 in the “classic-modern” style so typical of the era, has retained its original lineal design and simple architectural elements in spite of additions.

Today the hotel also functions as a gallery and offers guests an exclusive exhibition of glass artworks by the internationally renowned artist, Ioan Nemtoi.

In 2010, 3 rooms on the ground floor were converted to accommodate a 50 square-metre meetings room so that meetings for up to 30 persons can now be held at The Levante Parliament.

The concept for the hotel is based on the four elements, FIRE (light & transparency), EARTH (materials and colours), AIR (our rooms have a ceiling height of 3.3 metres) and WATER (fluidity and flowing forms) – coupled with all the technological assets of a modern design hotel.

Robert Oerley

Oerley, Robert
Born August 24, 1876 in Vienna, died on November 15, 1945, also in Vienna.

Oerley, from 1902 a member of the Vienna Hagenbund and then from 1907 a member of the Vienna Secession, first built a number of private villas. He also quite often designed the interiors as well and felt duty-bound in the early days to follow the precepts of the Jugendstil style fairly strictly.

---

Later, after the construction of the Luithlen Sanatorium, he and Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffmann and the Gessner brothers were together at the heart of the Austrian avant-garde.

In 1917, Robert Oerley built the Zeiss works, then later the Vienna Radiowerke and Philips tape-recorder factory in Penzing, one of the most remarkable examples of industrial architecture of the time.
In the between-wars period, Oerley contributed to the drive to erect large communal residential complexes, e.g. the Hanusch-Hof (1924/25) and George-Washington-Hof (1927 to 1930).
Oerley, who at this time became increasingly involved in city planning, also participated in the construction of the new Turkish capital, Ankara, in the years 1927 to 1932. After his return to Austria, he received only a few more commissions in the years that followed.