The Faena Hotel Miami Beach — A 2026 Review

The Faena Hotel turned ten last December. The property opened in December 2015 — a grand opening that I attended in my pre-BCJ capacity as a freelance correspondent covering the South Florida luxury circuit, at a moment when the Faena District master-plan had been under construction for nearly five years and when the broader Miami Beach luxury hospitality market was still rebuilding from the post-2008 recession overhang.

The Faena is Alan Faena’s American statement. The Argentine hotelier — the founder of the Faena Hotel + Universe in Buenos Aires in 2004 and the operator of the small Faena brand across the early 2010s — partnered with Len Blavatnik on the Miami Beach project starting in 2010, with the broader Faena District master-plan covering five blocks along Collins Avenue between 32nd and 36th Streets, six independent property components (the Faena Hotel, the Faena Forum, the Faena Bazaar, the Casa Faena, the Faena Versailles Contemporary residential tower, and the Faena House residential tower), and a $1.2 billion total development cost across the master-plan’s five-year construction cycle. The Faena Hotel is the hospitality anchor of the master-plan and is the property the rest of the District’s positioning is built around.

The property has been continuously operated under the Faena brand since the December 2015 opening, with the broader Faena hospitality brand carrying parallel operations in Buenos Aires (the original Faena Hotel + Universe) and a small set of associated projects. The Miami Beach property is the brand’s American flagship and the largest single hotel inventory in the Faena portfolio.

I stayed at the Faena for five nights in mid-April 2026, in a Suite Ocean View on the seventh floor (room 707), at $1,680 per night including tax. Cash. No press rate, no comp. The booking was made through Faena’s direct rate at a shoulder-season window (April 13 through 18) selected specifically for the rate calculus rather than for any specific Faena Forum programming.

The location

The Faena sits at 3201 Collins Avenue at the corner of 32nd Street — twelve blocks north of the Setai at 2001 Collins, six blocks north of the Edition Miami Beach at 2901 Collins, and at the heart of the Faena District master-plan. The location is the most Mid-Beach of the four anchor Miami-area luxury beachfront hotels (Setai, Faena, 1 Hotel SoBe, Four Seasons Surfside) and the operational pick for a stay where the South Beach scene is too crowded and the Surfside-quiet character is too remote.

The block is the most fully developed single Collins Avenue block in Miami Beach. The Faena Hotel occupies the east side of Collins at 32nd Street (the restored 1948 Saxony Hotel building, oriented toward the Atlantic). The Faena Forum is across Collins on the west side at the same block. The Faena Bazaar is one block north on Collins. The Casa Faena is two blocks north at 35th Street. The Faena District’s specific concentration of hospitality, cultural, and retail components inside a five-block radius is unmatched on Collins Avenue and is the strongest single argument for the location.

The walk to the Faena Forum is two minutes (cross Collins Avenue at 32nd, the Forum is the cylinder-and-cube building directly opposite). The walk to the Faena Bazaar is four minutes. The walk to the Casa Faena is eight minutes. The walk south to the Setai is fifteen minutes; the walk north to the broader Mid-Beach restaurant strip is ten minutes. The walk to the Faena Beach (the property’s private beach club, oriented east immediately behind the hotel building) is two minutes.

The arrival sequence and the Cathedral

The arrival sequence at the Faena is the most theatrical of any Miami Beach hotel and is the moment that the Luhrmann-Martin design vocabulary asserts itself. The hotel’s main entrance is on Collins Avenue at 32nd Street, under a small canopy with two doormen. The arrival corridor — known internally as the Cathedral, a 100-foot central axial corridor running east from the Collins Avenue entrance to the pool-deck-and-Atlantic-facing rear of the property — is the property’s defining single interior space.

The Cathedral’s vocabulary is theatrical proscenium-arch design at architectural scale. The corridor walls are decorated with a series of large-scale murals by the Argentine artist Juan Gatti (the Faena brand’s longtime commissioned-art partner) depicting allegorical figures in a theatrical seaside vocabulary. The ceiling is gilded gold leaf across the full corridor length, illuminated by a series of chandeliers. The floor is marine-themed mosaic tile in a Saxony-era period-appropriate pattern. The end of the corridor opens onto a small Cathedral altar — a circular reception desk under a domed ceiling — where check-in is conducted, before the corridor continues to the pool-deck-and-Atlantic-facing rear of the property.

The Cathedral is the strongest single Luhrmann-Martin interior moment at the property and is the entry sequence that the rest of the property is anchored on. For first-time visitors who are not yet committed to a room stay, walking the Cathedral from the Collins Avenue entrance to the pool deck is the single most informative property-character experience — the walk-through is open to non-residents during property hours and is the strongest free-of-charge introduction to the Faena vocabulary.

The 1948 Saxony Hotel restoration

The Faena Hotel is housed in the restored Saxony Hotel building — a 1948 hotel structure designed by Roy F. France, the Miami Beach architect whose work in the late 1940s and 1950s defined the Collins Avenue Mid-Beach hospitality vocabulary, and originally opened as a high-end Miami Beach hotel that hosted Hollywood-era guests including Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Dean Martin across the 1950s.

The Saxony restoration was the largest single piece of preservation-and-rebuilding work in the Faena District master-plan. The building’s interior was gutted to the original structural shell to make way for the new program; many historic features — the terrazzo floors, the cathedral columns at the central corridor (which became the Cathedral), the fireplace surrounds in the public spaces — were rescued during the gutting and restored to the new program. The exterior 1948 Roy F. France facade was preserved in full and reads as the property’s most directly Art Deco single architectural element.

The restoration was complete in time for the December 2015 grand opening. The total room count is 169 guest rooms across the property’s main building (the Saxony) and a small adjacent annex. The room layouts are a mix of standard rooms, suites, and a small set of penthouse-grade units at the upper floors with direct Atlantic views.

The Suite Ocean View on the seventh floor

The Suite Ocean View at 800 sq ft is the property’s mid-tier suite category and the one I’d recommend for a first-time stay where the suite premium is being paid for the room product and the Atlantic view together. The room layout — a separated sitting room with a writing desk and a small sofa, a primary bedroom with a king bed, a marble-clad bathroom with separate tub and walk-in shower, a small balcony facing east over the pool deck and the Atlantic — sits between the standard rooms (560 sq ft at the entry tier) and the larger suite categories (1,400 sq ft and up at the penthouse tier).

The view from the seventh floor east-facing balcony is the strongest single feature of the room. The Atlantic is visible across the property’s pool deck and Faena Beach (the property’s private beach club, immediately east of the hotel building), with the morning sunrise visible from the room’s east-facing window from approximately 6:30 AM through 9 AM depending on the season. The Mammoth Garden — the space around the Damien Hirst gold mammoth sculpture — is visible at the south end of the pool deck immediately below the balcony.

The room’s finishes are the property’s Luhrmann-Martin design vocabulary at room scale. The wall finishes (a deep navy-and-cream palette with deco-era decorative moulding profiles), the marine-themed soft furnishings (a navy-and-gold patterned upholstery on the seating, a marine-themed throw on the bed), the brass-and-marble bathroom fittings, the Frette linen tier (600 thread count, refreshed regularly), the dark teak floors — all read as a theatrical translation of the Saxony’s 1948 Art Deco vocabulary to a contemporary luxury hotel room program.

Wi-Fi peaked at 178 Mbps down. The in-room minibar is curated with a focused short list (a small Argentine wine selection reflecting the Faena brand origin, the standard NYC-luxury-hotel-equivalent small-format spirits tray, a focused short list of Champagne). The in-room amenity tray includes Faena-branded canvas pouches with the property’s signature bath products and a small box of Argentine chocolates. The bed (a custom king with a Faena-specified mattress profile, medium-firm) is appropriate for the room’s vacation-anchored use case.

The Damien Hirst mammoth and the property’s contemporary art program

The Faena’s contemporary art program is the strongest at any Miami Beach hotel and the single feature that positions the property as the most art-centric luxury hotel in the United States. The program is anchored on two commissioned Damien Hirst pieces — ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’ (the gold woolly mammoth in the Mammoth Garden) and ‘Golden Myth’ (the gold unicorn at the entrance to Pao) — both acquired by Faena’s partner Len Blavatnik at art auctions in the years leading up to the property’s 2015 opening.

‘Gone But Not Forgotten’ is the more architecturally significant of the two. The piece — a 24-karat-gold-plated woolly mammoth skeleton, approximately three metres tall, mounted inside a glass case — sits in the Mammoth Garden, the outdoor garden space between the pool deck and the Faena Beach immediately east of the hotel building. The case is the central visual anchor of the garden, and the garden is one of the property’s event venues (accommodating up to 150 guests for outdoor receptions, with the mammoth as the central visual feature). The piece is accessible to all hotel guests on a walk-through basis during property hours and is open to non-residents during the Faena Forum’s exhibition hours.

‘Golden Myth’ is the gold unicorn sculpture installed at the entrance to Pao by Paul Qui. The piece sits in the small foyer space immediately inside the Pao entrance, and is the room’s central design anchor. The piece is visible to all Pao dinner guests on entry to the room and to all property guests walking through the corridor outside the Pao entrance.

The two Hirst pieces are the most-photographed contemporary art installations at any Miami Beach hotel. For first-time visitors who are not yet committed to a room stay, the Mammoth Garden walkthrough and the Pao foyer visit (both open during property hours) are the strongest single non-room introductions to the Faena’s art program.

The property also carries a continuous rotating program of smaller contemporary art commissions across the public-spaces and the corridor walls. The program is curated under the Faena Art organisation (Faena’s in-house art program operator) and rotates across the year on a quarterly cycle. The rotating program is not on the same scale as the two Hirst commissions but produces a continuous freshness to the property’s art-on-the-walls vocabulary.

Pao by Paul Qui

Pao by Paul Qui is the property’s signature fine-dining venue and one of the strongest pan-Asian fine-dining restaurants in Miami Beach. The kitchen is led by Paul Qui — the Filipino-American chef who won James Beard Foundation Best Chef Southwest recognition for his Austin-based work in the early 2010s and whose modern Asian vocabulary combines Filipino, Spanish, Japanese and French influences.

The room is on the property’s mezzanine level, accessed through a foyer that contains the Damien Hirst ‘Golden Myth’ gold unicorn sculpture as the central design anchor. The dining room itself reads as the Luhrmann-Martin design vocabulary at restaurant scale — a deep red-and-gold theatrical palette, velvet seating, gilded ceiling decoration, mirror-and-velvet finishes across the room. The room seats 96 covers and is the most theatrically composed restaurant room in Miami Beach.

Dinner runs Tuesday through Sunday from 6 PM to 11 PM with an a la carte menu (mains running $48 to $95), a tasting menu at $185 per person, and a chef’s tasting at $245 per person. The wine pairing program runs $115 per person. The menu draws from the chef’s pan-Asian range — Filipino-influenced openers, Japanese-influenced raw plates, Spanish-Filipino mains, French-technique desserts — in a deliberately broad framework that reflects the chef’s own multi-cultural training. The room is open to non-residents on a reservation basis through OpenTable and Resy, and the booking window typically holds at three to four weeks for weekend slots in peak season.

Los Fuegos by Francis Mallmann

Los Fuegos by Francis Mallmann is the property’s open-fire Argentine asado restaurant and the strongest single chef brand on the property. The kitchen is led under the creative direction of Francis Mallmann — the Patagonian-born Argentine chef whose Seven Fires cookbook and whose Argentine-asado vocabulary defined the contemporary live-fire-cooking category in the early 2010s and whose Mallmann-at-Los-Fuegos brand presence at the Faena is the property’s strongest chef-brand association.

The room is on the property’s lobby level, opening onto the pool deck and the central Cathedral corridor. The room’s central feature is the parrilla grill — the Argentine open-fire cooking station that is visible from the dining room and is the source of all of the room’s cooked product. The dining room itself is built around the parrilla, with the dining seating arranged in a circle facing the open kitchen.

Dinner runs Tuesday through Saturday from 6 PM to 11 PM with a live-fire menu in an a la carte format. The whole-animal cuts (the room’s signature dishes — the long-cooked rib of beef, the parrilla-grilled whole fish, the long-cooked lamb shoulder) run $58 to $125 per plate. The wine list is anchored on Argentine wines from the Mallmann-curated selection, with a focused short list of French and Italian alternatives.

The Sunday asado — the property’s signature single F&B service — is the room’s most-booked event. The service runs every Sunday from 12 PM to 4 PM as a buffet-style asado: whole-animal preparations cooked across the morning over the open fire, served family-style at long tables in the room’s central courtyard, anchored by Argentine wines from the Mallmann list, and structured as a social gathering rather than a discrete dinner service. The asado is $145 per person (inclusive of all food, exclusive of wine and beverage) and books two to three weeks in advance during peak season. For first-time Faena stays, anchoring a Sunday-into-Monday stay around the asado is the operational play that maximises the property’s signature single service.

Tierra Santa Healing House

Tierra Santa Healing House is the property’s spa and is the largest hotel spa in Miami Beach. The spa occupies 22,000 sq ft across the property’s lower floors and adjacent annex, with a treatment program anchored on South American healing traditions (Andean herbal medicine, Argentine grounding-and-energy work, Brazilian massage technique) combined with contemporary skincare and beauty programs.

The spa is named for and inspired by the Tierra Santa estate in Punta del Este, Uruguay — the Faena brand’s South American spa anchor and the source of the Healing House’s treatment vocabulary. The Miami Beach Tierra Santa is the largest single physical spa in the Faena hospitality network and the strongest single non-Hirst differentiator the property has against the Setai.

The treatment program runs across 16 treatment rooms, a small wet area with a steam room and a sauna, a hammam (the Faena’s signature single spa feature), and a small contemporary skincare-and-beauty section. Treatment pricing is at the upper end of the Miami Beach hotel spa range — a 60-minute Tierra Santa signature massage runs $325, a 90-minute deep-healing treatment runs $545, the multi-hour Tierra Santa Journey runs $785 for the four-hour combination program. The treatments are competent and the spa is genuinely destination-grade — the only hotel spa in Miami Beach in the same scale-and-quality band as the Aman New York’s 25,000-sq-ft spa is the Tierra Santa.

For a stay where the spa is the primary anchor, the Faena is the operational pick over the Setai’s smaller Spa by Valmont and over the 1 Hotel’s smaller Bamford Haybarn Spa. The Tierra Santa is the strongest single spa amenity in Miami Beach and is the credential that justifies the Faena’s rate premium over the comparison set on stays where the spa visit is a planned daily activity.

The Faena Forum

The Faena Forum is the Faena District’s anchor cultural venue and the most architecturally significant single building in the Faena master-plan. The Forum was designed by Rem Koolhaas’s OMA architecture practice — the Dutch architecture firm that has anchored the contemporary cultural-architecture category since the early 2000s — and was completed for the December 2015 grand opening of the broader Faena District.

The Forum’s architectural vocabulary is two distinct geometric volumes — a cylinder and a cube — that combine into a single 50,000-sq-ft structure on the west side of Collins Avenue at 32nd Street, directly opposite the Faena Hotel. The cylinder is an open soaring void rising 40 feet to a dome with a central glazed oculus and a spiralling walkway connecting the ground floor to the oculus, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome. The cube takes inspiration from the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires and houses the Forum’s flexible black-box performance and exhibition space.

The Forum’s program covers art exhibitions, performance, lectures, and Art Basel Miami Beach-week programming. The December Art Basel cycle (first week of December, annual) is the Forum’s peak operational season and the period when the Faena Hotel’s room rates climb to their annual peak. The Forum’s regular exhibition program rotates across the year on a quarterly cycle.

The Forum is accessible to all Faena Hotel guests on a complimentary basis during exhibition hours and is the strongest single non-hotel cultural amenity attached to any Miami Beach hotel. For first-time stays at the Faena, scheduling at least one Forum visit during the stay is the operational play that maximises the property’s broader Faena District positioning.

The Faena Theater

The Faena Theater — a 150-seat cabaret venue on the property’s mezzanine level — is the property’s signature performance venue and the strongest direct expression of the Luhrmann-Martin theatrical vocabulary. The Theater runs a continuous performance program of cabaret, tango, jazz, and contemporary performance acts on a rotating residency schedule.

The Theater’s 2026 season has anchored on a Latin-American cabaret residency that runs Wednesday through Saturday evenings, with ticket prices running $85 to $145 per person depending on the act and the seating tier. A three-course dinner option is available at $95 per person added to the ticket. The Theater is the closest analogue in Miami Beach to the Cafe Carlyle in New York and is the strongest single argument for the Faena’s positioning as a cabaret-and-performance-anchored property.

Where it lands

The Faena Hotel at 10 years, under Alan Faena’s continuous brand operation, is in unusually strong shape for a property of its scale and intensity. The Luhrmann-Martin theatrical interior is the strongest single design vocabulary at any Miami Beach hotel. The Damien Hirst mammoth and the broader contemporary art program are the strongest art-on-property credentials at any US hotel. The Tierra Santa Healing House is the largest and strongest single spa in Miami Beach. Pao and Los Fuegos are the strongest combined chef-brand F&B program in the Mid-Beach market. The Faena Forum next door is the strongest single non-hotel cultural amenity attached to any Miami Beach hotel.

The rate band ($1,400 to $1,900 per night for the standard tier in shoulder season, $1,600 to $2,400 at the Suite Ocean View tier, $2,400 to $4,500 at the larger suite tiers, climbing to $3,500 to $8,500 at peak holiday season and during Art Basel) sits at the upper end of the Miami Beach luxury hotel market and is competitive with the Setai. For a Mid-Beach theatricality-and-art-anchored stay, the Faena is the operational pick. For an Asian-influenced minimalism stay on the South Beach scene, the Setai. For a sustainability-positioning stay, the 1 Hotel. For a Surfside-quiet stay with Michelin-Starred dining, the Four Seasons Surf Club.

Related on the journal. The Setai Miami Beach — A 2026 Review · Park Hyatt New York at Eleven: The Two-Stay Retrospective · Mandarin Oriental New York at Twenty-Two: A 2026 Review · The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel — A 2026 Review

Frequently Asked Questions

Who designed the Faena interior and what is the design vocabulary?

The Faena Hotel Miami Beach interior was designed by Baz Luhrmann — the Australian film director whose Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby anchored the contemporary cinematic theatrical-historical vocabulary — and Catherine Martin, his wife and collaborator, the Academy Award-winning costume and production designer who shares creative-direction credit on most of Luhrmann’s major films. The Luhrmann-Martin design vocabulary at the Faena is the most directly cinematic single hotel interior in the United States. The palette draws from Art Deco glamour (the lobby’s gold-leafed columns, the central corridor’s red-and-gold theatrical proscenium-arch axis, the ballroom’s velvet-and-mirror finishes), from the seaside-charm vocabulary that the Saxony’s original 1948 program had embedded in the building (the marine-themed mosaic floors, the seashell-pattern decorative elements, the Art Deco corridor proportions), and from the Faena District’s broader Argentine-tango-and-cabaret cultural vocabulary (the velvet curtains, the gilded ceilings, the rococo-meets-cabaret room-styling across the public spaces). The design intent is theatrical rather than restrained — the property is consciously the most theatrical single hotel interior in Miami Beach and the strongest atmospheric counterpoint to the Adrian Zecha minimalism at the Setai twelve blocks south.

Is the Damien Hirst mammoth sculpture still on the property in 2026?

Yes. ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’ — the 24-karat-gold-plated woolly mammoth skeleton sculpture by Damien Hirst, approximately three metres tall, mounted inside a glass case — remains installed in the Mammoth Garden between the Faena Beach and the Faena Hotel’s pool deck. The piece was acquired by Faena’s partner Len Blavatnik at a charity auction in Cannes in 2014 and has been installed at the Faena Hotel since the property’s December 2015 opening. The Mammoth Garden — the space immediately around the sculpture — is one of the property’s event venues and accommodates up to 150 guests for outdoor receptions, with the mammoth as the venue’s central visual anchor. The property also carries a second Damien Hirst piece, ‘Golden Myth’ (a gold unicorn sculpture installed at the entrance of Pao by Paul Qui), as a second commissioned Hirst installation on the property. The two Hirst pieces are the most-photographed contemporary art installations at any Miami Beach hotel and are the strongest single argument for the Faena’s positioning as the most art-centric luxury hotel in the United States. The pieces are accessible to all hotel guests on a walk-through basis during property hours; the Mammoth Garden is also accessible to event guests during the property’s wedding-and-reception programming.

What is Pao by Paul Qui and is the chef still leading the kitchen in 2026?

Pao by Paul Qui is the Faena Hotel’s signature contemporary Asian fine-dining venue, opened with the property in December 2015 and operating continuously since. The kitchen is led by Paul Qui — the Filipino-American chef who won James Beard Foundation Best Chef Southwest recognition for his Austin-based work in the early 2010s and whose modern Asian vocabulary at Pao combines Filipino, Spanish, Japanese and French influences in a deliberately broad pan-Asian framework. The room’s signature visual feature is the Damien Hirst ‘Golden Myth’ gold unicorn sculpture installed at the entrance — the property’s second commissioned Hirst piece and the room’s central design anchor. The menu is a tasting-format program that draws across the chef’s pan-Asian range, with mains running $48 to $95 a la carte and the tasting menu running $185 per person. The room operates as the property’s dinner-only fine-dining destination and is open to non-residents on a reservation basis. The combination of the Hirst sculpture, the room’s theatrical Luhrmann-Martin proscenium-arch framing, and the chef’s pan-Asian vocabulary makes Pao the most atmospherically distinctive non-residential dining room in Miami Beach.

What is Los Fuegos by Francis Mallmann and how is the Sunday asado structured?

Los Fuegos by Francis Mallmann is the Faena Hotel’s open-fire Argentine asado restaurant, opened with the property in December 2015 under the creative direction of Francis Mallmann — the Patagonian-born Argentine chef whose Seven Fires cookbook and whose Argentine-asado vocabulary defined the contemporary live-fire-cooking category in the early 2010s and whose Mallmann at Los Fuegos brand presence at the Faena is the strongest single chef brand on the property. The kitchen runs a live-fire program built around the Argentine asado vocabulary — whole-animal cuts cooked over open flame, the parrilla grill as the room’s central feature, the Patagonian-style cooking that Mallmann is known for. The Sunday asado is the property’s signature single F&B service: a buffet-style asado service that runs every Sunday from 12 PM to 4 PM, with whole-animal preparations cooked across the morning, served family-style at long tables in the room’s central courtyard, anchored by Argentine wines from the Mallmann-curated list, and structured as a social gathering rather than a discrete dinner service. The Sunday asado runs $145 per person (inclusive of all food, exclusive of wine and beverage) and books two to three weeks in advance during peak season. The regular dinner service runs Tuesday through Saturday evenings with the live-fire menu in an a la carte format.

What is the Faena Forum and how does it relate to the hotel?

The Faena Forum is the Faena District’s anchor cultural venue, a 50,000-square-foot structure designed by Rem Koolhaas’s OMA architecture practice, located immediately adjacent to the Faena Hotel and the Faena Bazaar across 32nd Street and Collins Avenue. The Forum was conceived by Alan Faena as the cultural anchor of the broader Faena District master-plan — the Miami-Beach-block-scale development that Faena and partner Len Blavatnik built across the early 2010s, of which the Faena Hotel is the hospitality anchor and the Faena Forum is the cultural anchor. The Forum’s architectural vocabulary is two distinct geometric volumes — a cylinder and a cube. The cylinder is an open soaring void rising 40 feet to a dome with a central glazed oculus, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome. The cube takes inspiration from the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. The Forum’s program covers art exhibitions, performance, lectures, and Art Basel Miami Beach-week programming — the December Art Basel cycle is the Forum’s peak operational season and the period when the Faena Hotel’s room rates climb to their annual peak. The Forum is accessible to all hotel guests on a complimentary basis during exhibition hours and is the strongest single non-hotel cultural amenity attached to any Miami Beach hotel. The combination of the Faena Hotel, the Faena Forum, the Faena Bazaar (retail), and the Casa Faena (a smaller boutique hotel two blocks north under the same Faena brand) makes the Faena District the most fully realised hospitality-and-cultural master-plan project in Miami Beach.