Excelsior Hotel Nürnberg Fürth - Germany's Answer To The Luxor

Pilots flying into Nuremberg Airport use it to find their way home. That's not a marketing flourish - the sloped glass facade of a pyramid-shaped hotel outside Fürth genuinely functions as a landmark on approach, its faceted surface catching the light from miles off.

After sitting empty since 2022, the building is due to reopen in 2026 as the Excelsior Hotel Nürnberg Fürth, a member of Radisson Individuals - the latest chapter for a structure that's been a fixture of the skyline between Nuremberg and Fürth for three decades.

Location

The hotel sits between Fürth and Nuremberg, right along the Main-Danube Canal, in an area easy to reach but far enough from the center to feel calm. It's about a four-minute walk from the Fürth Europaallee bus stop, and a two-minute walk from the Fürth Gartenkolonie Südstadt I stop if you're coming by bus from the main train station. If you're driving in from Nuremberg Airport, it's roughly 10 km (6 miles) away, about a 22-minute drive depending on traffic.

From Pyramide To Excelsior

The building opened in autumn 1994 as the Hotel-Pyramide, the vision of the Erras family, who by their own account were told by friends that a hotel this far from the city center was doomed. It wasn't. Within twenty years the hotel had logged around 32,000 overnight stays and hosted roughly 3.8 million conference attendees, and it was fully booked from its very first day in business.

Its guest book reads like a strange cross-section of German public life - chancellors Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel all stayed here, alongside television host Günther Jauch, singer Sarah Connor and journalist Ulrich Wickert. At its twentieth anniversary party, some 500 guests watched the glass pyramid lit up in shifting colors through the night, with former musician and endurance athlete Joey Kelly as the guest speaker.

The story got complicated after that. The operator abruptly shut the hotel down in September 2016, citing technical problems with the building - a claim the property's owners disputed - which led to a court case over unpaid rent and, eventually, the operator's insolvency. The building reopened under a new name, Excelsior, in January 2018, only to close again in August 2022, worn down partly by staffing shortages.

A fire safety overhaul and repairs from water damage followed, pushing what was meant to be a late-2025 reopening into 2026, when the GCH Hotel Group took over management and folded the property into the Radisson Individuals brand - a badge for independent hotels that keeps each building's own character intact while plugging it into Radisson's booking network and loyalty program.

What's Inside

The public spaces lean into the building's odd geometry - a large, open lobby area that makes the most of all that glass, with a bar tucked near reception pouring beer, wine and other drinks for anyone winding down after a day of meetings or sightseeing.

For food, the hotel's restaurant was originally launched under the name PRIME when the property reopened in 2018. Breakfast is the main event here: a buffet spread of baked pastries, fresh fruit, cereals and a mix of hot and cold dishes, alongside coffee, tea and juice. If you're after dinner options, the reception team points guests toward restaurants in the surrounding area.

The Rooms

There are 104 rooms and suites across the property, arranged along the building's sloped glass exterior. Because the pyramid's walls tilt slightly outward, nearly every room gets a large, angled window rather than a flat one - an odd side effect of the architecture that ends up giving most rooms sweeping views over the surrounding region and the Nuremberg skyline.

Superior Room

At 26 square meters (280 square feet), the Superior Room is built around a pair of twin box-spring beds and takes full advantage of the glass facade, with an outward-facing window that pulls in plenty of daylight.

Suite

The Suite comes in at 84 square meters (904 square feet) and is a different proposition entirely - a separate living room, a fully equipped kitchenette, and twin box-spring beds, set on the first floor.

It still catches the building's natural light through the glass structure, even without the higher-floor views, making it more suited to longer stays where a bit of extra space and self-sufficiency matter.

Premium Suite

The largest of the room categories, the Premium Suite – River View sits at the very top of the hotel on the sixth floor, spanning 122 square meters (1,313 square feet) and sleeping up to four people across two twin beds.

Its panoramic windows wrap around the space, giving a 360-degree view over the surrounding region and the canal below - about as complete a look at the pyramid's unusual setting as you'll get from inside it.