When I first stood inside this building on Grote Overstraat, I saw past the peeling paint and leaking roof straight to what it once was, and what it could be again. My work as an interior designer in my design studio func.design has always circled back to the same thing: giving old buildings room to breathe again, rather than starting from scratch. Gilded Ox Suites is where that instinct found its fullest expression.

This address has carried a name since 1899, when it opened as De Vergulde Ossen, the Gilded Oxen, a stately property in the heart of Deventer. Walk through it today and you'll still find the high ceilings,  the graceful windows, and the staircase that has carried more than a century of footsteps. Restoring it wasn't about turning back the clock; it was about keeping what makes a building feel warm and trustworthy, and building modern comfort in and around that.

The interior follows a philosophy I call intimate opulence: deep, warm colours like chocolate brown and amber, paired with dark wood, velvet and brass details. Every room is planned for how it feels to move through, not for how much furniture fits in it. To me, true luxury isn't about what you own, it's about the experience, the small moments that stay with you, and a real connection to the city outside your window.

Eleonora of Woodstock was an English princess, daughter of King Edward II and Isabella of France. Married at just thirteen to Reinald II, Duke of Guelders, she became a duchess before she'd properly left girlhood. After Reinald's death she largely disappeared from view, moving between residences, including Staverden Castle, before eventually settling in Deventer, where she died in 1355 at the age of thirty-six. She was buried in the city's Broederenkerk, and her story, one of the city's great, quiet royal secrets, was the subject of a dedicated exhibition there in 2024.

Elisabeth Bosc de la Calmette spent her whole life in Deventer, living on Kleine Overstraat with her unmarried brother. She was a poet, publishing a collection of poems, Gedichtjes, around 1796, and in 1781 was granted an annual income by Stadtholder Willem V,  a rare measure of financial independence for an unmarried woman of her time. She was a member of Deventer's Walloon Church and never left the city.

Johanna Aleida Budde was born in Deventer and trained as a painter at the Koninklijke Academie in Amsterdam, under history painter Jan Willem Pieneman. She exhibited regularly through the 1830s and '40s, painted portraits, landscapes and still lifes, and became a member of Amsterdam's art academy in 1833, a striking achievement for a woman artist of her generation. Deventer still remembers her: a street, the J.A. Buddestraat, carries her name today.

Robinah Birnie's story reaches furthest from Deventer's own streets. Born in East Java in 1844, she became the legitimate wife of Dutch tobacco planter George Birnie, a position very few women in her circumstances were given at the time. Fluent in Madurese and Javanese, she used her local knowledge to help build the family's plantation business, and later travelled with George to Deventer, where he introduced her to his family. She spent her final years in the city and died there in 1912.

Four women, four stories, and one house that carries them all. When you stay at Gilded Ox Suites, you're not just sleeping in a beautiful room, you're part of a story that's been unfolding here for more than a century, and one we're glad to pass on to you.