Hotel Kitty was established by Catharina Muyzers, nearly 30 years ago. All these years she managed the hotel on her own, doing everything from making reservations, welcoming the guests, to tidying the rooms. She could do so because she lived in the house herself, on the first floor, and she had her guestrooms on the second and third floor.

Kitty, as she has always been called, really put her heart into making the house look extraordinary. Her hotel was situated in an historical building dating from 1904, in Amsterdam’s 19th-century Plantage-area. With her Louis XIV taste in furniture, her love for curiosa, and the grandeur of the enormous house, the hotel embodied both art and kitsch and they went hand in hand, lead by Miss Kitty.

Due to old age, she had to say goodbye to the hotel. This happened in January 2006. She was 84 years old.

—Lara Hannawi