Bill Bensley’s French Indochine fantasy in the clouds of Sapa, Vietnam, is doubling as a gallery this month: Hotel de la Coupole Sapa – MGallery is hosting five Vietnamese contemporary artists and 28 works in its lobby until 25 October.
Nobody stumbles upon Sapa. It sits in the Hoang Lien Son Mountains of northwestern Vietnam, around four and a half hours by road from Hanoi’s Noi Bai airport, and the mountains around it are known for their mist. Then, in the middle of town, opposite the church, a mustard-yellow building with orange columns and a dark dome appears, looking very much as though it took a wrong turn out of 1920s France. This is Hotel de la Coupole, and the wrong turn is entirely deliberate.
The designer is Bill Bensley, and the idea is a pairing that sounds like a lot to hold together: the French Indochine era of the 1920s and ’30s, dressed in haute couture, then trimmed with the colours, patterns and craft traditions of the hill communities around Sapa. The hotel’s answer is to commit to both at full volume. It has 249 rooms and suites, and says it is the only international five-star hotel in town.
The commitment starts at reception. Behind the desk, lit shelves glow in jewel colours, and along the balcony above, dress forms, hats and trunks are arranged as though a vintage atelier was left open overnight. Paintings, antiques and collected objects keep turning up all through the building, so that walking to the lift becomes a small tour. Even the ballroom, an art-deco space that holds up to 450 guests theatre-style, is called the Salon des Grands Couturiers, and can be split into three smaller halls named Auber, St. Honoré and Cambon.
The fashion thread carries through the rooms, each uniquely decorated. The Classic and Superior rooms are painted a bold French mustard, said to recall Indochine. The Deluxe Kings go jade green, taken from the hills and valleys outside, and come with free-standing tubs in open-plan marble bathrooms. The suites are named after fabrics used by France’s vintage fashion houses, and each category has its own colour: Oriental orange with ruby red upholstery for the Deluxe Suites, a deep pink the hotel likens to French rosé for the Executive Suites, and cerulean blue for the 180 sqm Presidential Suite on the ninth floor, picked to match the sky. The Executive Suites sit at the corners of the building with a double balcony, and their free-standing tubs face large windows over the mountains and valleys. The Presidential Suite has a library, an eight-seat dining table and a private sauna. Every room has a balcony with full-length doors facing the town, the courtyard garden or the mountains.
Eating and drinking happen high up. Chic, a French haute brasserie on the tenth floor, seats 198 and serves French dishes made with some local ingredients. Absinthe, the rooftop bar, takes its cue from 1920s Paris, with a domed ceiling, magenta accents and an outdoor fireplace facing the mountain range. Down in the lobby, Cacao Patisserie works with Marou chocolate, afternoon tea, cakes and macarons, set around a spiral staircase.
The seventh floor is where the hotel gets theatrical. Le Grand Bassin, the indoor heated pool, has emerald green marble columns, bronze statues and pink chandeliers, with floor-to-ceiling windows onto the Sapa valley. Nuages Spa shares the floor and pairs French skincare with traditional Red Dao therapies, in a room done in creams and blacks as a nod to 1920s and ’30s couture. Even the gym, Athleticum, gets the treatment, in deep blue with period features and tall windows onto the scenery. Bobbins, the children’s club, is a circus-striped pink room on the tenth.
Location does a good deal of the work. The hotel sits next to the Sun Plaza funicular station, and the cable car to Fansipan, the 3,143m peak, is about twenty minutes away. The hotel also markets itself for weddings, with vows in the courtyard “when the upland mist still lingers” and cocktails on the Absinthe terrace. By its own list of awards, it holds One Michelin Key for 2025 and 2026, and lists a No. 4 place among Southeast Asian hotels in the Condé Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards for 2026.
Into this setting, until 25 October, come five Vietnamese artists. The exhibition, Upon the Mountain, Down the Hill, was put together with Hanoi Studio Gallery and fills the Art Gallery Area at lobby level with 28 works across paintings, sculpture, lacquer and installations, by Pham Thai Binh, Nguyen Ngoc Thanh, Nguyen Quoc Trung, Pham Tra My and Pham Thuy Tien. The hotel and gallery teams chose works that would sit well together and suit the surroundings, mixing Vietnamese materials and traditions with regional subjects and the artists’ own experience.
Binh’s sculpture Whisper shows a young couple sharing a bicycle ride, a scene from daily life in the northern highlands, where he often finds his subjects. Thuy Tien’s Mơ Tiên series, four of its seven works on show, draws on childhood memory to imagine a young woman’s inner world, painted on circular and petal-like shaped formats rather than a standard rectangle. Both she and Tra My work in lacquer, which Tra My has made the focus of her practice, and elsewhere in the room shaped paintings gather around a sculpture of a child holding a balloon. All of it hangs beneath Bensley’s chandeliers and balconies.
One guest, Ms. Linh, told the hotel the exhibition left her seeing Sapa differently, with art, architecture and local culture blending into “more than just a place to stay”. The show is the hotel’s contribution to MGallery’s Heritage Days programme, and the hotel plans more exhibitions and cultural experiences in 2027. It is open to guests, local residents and travellers at 1 Hoang Lien Street.
The title suggests the route: spend the day on the mountain, among the villages and landscapes, then come down the hill to see them reinterpreted in sculpture and lacquer. A hotel this committed to decoration has, sensibly, made room for some art.
