The Municipal Hotel & Spa Liverpool – MGallery

The Municipal Hotel & Spa Liverpool opened in May 2023 inside the city's former town hall on Dale Street, becoming Liverpool's first five-star property under Accor's MGallery collection. A roughly £40m conversion turned the 1868 civic landmark into a 179-room hotel with a full spa, while keeping its clock tower and grand public rooms intact.

The place

Occupies the former Municipal Buildings on Dale Street in the heart of Liverpool's business district, a Grade II-listed 1868 civic landmark with a distinctive clock tower that served as Liverpool City Council's headquarters until 2017.

The concept

After the council relocated to the Cunard Building, the vacant 19th-century seat of local government sat empty for years before Accor and its partners spent roughly £40m converting it into Liverpool's first five-star hotel. Designers retained the building's grand civic bones — ornate ceilings, marble stairwells and tall arched windows — while commissioning bespoke bedroom furniture with a Liverpool furniture maker to keep the fit-out anchored in local craft. The result trades on the theatrical scale of a former town hall rather than a generic five-star template, giving MGallery's Liverpool debut a genuine sense of place instead of an imported luxury formula. It opened to the public on 10 May 2023 as the city's first hotel of its category.

Dining & wellness

The hotel houses the Seaforth Restaurant, the Palm Court Bar and a Botanic afternoon-tea lounge, plus a spa built around a 16-metre indoor pool, sauna, steam room and jacuzzi — a fuller wellness offer than most recent city-centre openings in Liverpool attempt.