Library Bar
The perfect setting for drinks and good company
Welcome to our Library Bar where we serve an array of cocktails, a curated selection of beers and creamy cappuccinos. Indulge in the finest whiskies and cognacs or with our inviting aperitifs and digestifs, ideal for enhancing your dining experience at Restaurant Ambassade.
The Library Bar offers a distinctive and tranquil ambiance, making it the perfect venue for gatherings in an elegant and relaxed setting.
The Library Bar is open from 10:00 AM to midnight.
The Library
Our Library Bar houses an impressive collection of 5000 books all signed by authors who have stayed at the Ambassade Hotel. The Ambassade Hotel thanks Dutch publishing houses for this wonderful collection, as they very often accommodate their authors at the Ambassade Hotel when they visit the Netherlands. Many famous authors have stayed at the Ambassade Hotel including Umberto Eco, Jonathan Safran Foer, Isabelle Allende, Zadie Smith, Mario Vargas Llosa and famous chefs such as René Redzepi and Antonio Carluccio.
Guest Books
Alongside this unique collection of signed books by international authors, the Library Bar also houses the Ambassade Hotel’s guest books. The guest books are not solely written by authors who have stayed at the Ambassade Hotel, they also contain dedications from many other famous hotel guests including musicians, actors, painters, philosophers, architects and politicians.
A word from our Librarian
”Already since my childhood I am avid reader of literature. After graduating in Geography at the University of Amsterdam in 1994, I started working at the Ambassade Hotel. I soon found the good relations with publishers and literary institutions that the hotel has very inspiring. Hired as reservations-manager I began getting more and more involved with this literary aspect and eventually became the direct contact for publishers and writers who stayed at the Ambassade Hotel.
At such a visit the hotel traditionally receives a copy of the book, signed and autographed personally by the author. Besides that we ask him or her to write a few words in the hotel’s guestbooks. These guestbooks have grown into a fascinating account of more than 30 years of literary history of the Netherlands and the Ambassade Hotel. Around the turn of the century our collection of signed books did become so extensive that the hotel was able to set up a library which actually consists entirely of autographed copies from authors who have been invited to stay at the hotel. The hotel’s owner asked me at that occasion to manage the book collection in addition to my duties as a reservations manager, and so I was appointed librarian of the Ambassade Hotel.
Contact with publishing houses and related cultural institutions is always very pleasant and I am most grateful because thanks to these, the Ambassade Hotel has become “the” literary hotel of the Netherlands. It is wonderful to work between books by great writers and often it makes me feel humble, like the main character in Haruki Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore: “the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing…, and they’re watching me.”
Eelco Douma
