25hours Hotel The Olympia – Sydney, Where Cinema, Queerness, and Maximalism Collide
A heritage theatre reborn as a flamboyant design hotel on one of Sydney’s most storied streets
Type: architectural hotel, design hotel, heritage hotel, lifestyle hotel, luxury hotel
Style: maximalist, cinematic, glam & sexy
Vibe: lively, rooftop bar, music & nightlife
A Historic Stage, Switched Back On
After years behind scaffolding, the former West Olympia Theatre has returned to Oxford Street in spectacular form as 25hours Hotel The Olympia—the brand’s first Australian address and one of Sydney’s most characterful new openings. Set within a heritage-listed building at the point where Paddington, Surry Hills, Darlinghurst, Kings Cross, and Moore Park converge, the hotel reactivates a site long woven into the city’s cultural life. Once home to the West Olympia Theatre and the legendary Grand Pacific Blue Room, it now channels that same spirit of performance, nightlife, and creative freedom into something distinctly contemporary.
Oxford Street, With the Volume Turned Up
This is not a hotel that tries to mute its surroundings. Quite the opposite: The Olympia leans fully into Oxford Street’s long association with rebellion, theatre, fashion, queer culture, and after-dark energy. That sense of local identity is central to the project. 25hours has treated the property less as a sealed-off hotel and more as a neighbourhood stage set—one deeply tied to Sydney’s artistic and LGBTQIA+ heritage, and designed to feel plugged into the street rather than removed from it.
A Grand Old Façade, A Cinematic Interior
The building’s Edwardian shell has been carefully restored, including its distinctive lantern-like corner presence, while the interiors pivot into the playful, layered visual language for which 25hours is known. Throughout the hotel, references to its former life as a cinema appear in witty, immersive ways: a check-in counter styled like a retro video rental desk, shelves lined with VHS tapes, and guest rooms built around the archetypes of the silver screen. The design balances preservation and theatricality—history at the edges, fantasy at the centre.
Dreamers, Renegades, and a Little Bit of Drama
The hotel’s 109 guestrooms are split into two cinematic moods: Dreamers and Renegades. One is lighter, more whimsical, and washed in colour; the other moodier, darker, and more seductive. Across both, the storytelling is deliberate rather than decorative, with original features, bold detailing, and commissioned works by Sydney artist Kubi Vasak helping connect the rooms to the building’s layered past. The result is immersive and slightly irreverent—rooms with genuine personality, not just polish.
Design With a Cast of Characters
The Olympia comes out of a collaboration between several notable creative practices: Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, Indyk Architects under Shelley Indyk, and Woods Bagot. That multi-authored approach makes sense here. The hotel doesn’t read as a single gesture, but as a richly staged composition—part heritage restoration, part fantasy set, part neighbourhood social club. It is also unmistakably 25hours in the way it folds design, art, music, and retail into one expressive whole.
Four Venues, One Very Social Address
Food and drink are central to the hotel’s personality. The Palomar brings its London pedigree to Sydney with a menu shaped by Southern Europe, North Africa, and the Levant. The Mulwray offers a more intimate mood, built around cocktails and biodynamic wines. Jacob the Angel handles the daytime tempo with coffee and pastries, while Monica, the rooftop bar, delivers the glamour shot: skyline views, DJ sets, live music, and a dash of nostalgic Hollywood fantasy. Together, they make the hotel feel less like a place to simply stay, and more like a place to circulate through.
DNA Hotels Verdict
25hours Hotel The Olympia is exactly what Oxford Street deserves: loud in spirit, layered in history, and entirely unafraid of spectacle. Rather than smoothing out the site’s past, it amplifies it—transforming a former theatre into a design hotel that still feels performative, social, and gloriously alive. For travellers drawn to hotels with narrative, subculture, and a strong point of view, The Olympia is less a place to retreat from Sydney than a thrilling way to fall deeper into it.
