COMO The Treasury

The Building Before the Hotel

Perth's luxury hotel tier has consolidated around a handful of properties in and near the CBD, each staking a different claim on the city's premium market. Crown Towers Perth represents the large-footprint resort model; The Ritz-Carlton, Perth brings international chain depth; Alex Hotel sits at the design-led boutique end. COMO The Treasury occupies a different position entirely: a 48-room property whose competitive advantage derives as much from its architecture as from its service or food programme. The State Buildings on Cathedral Avenue date to the 19th century, and the complex originally housed the city's land titles office, treasury, and — visible in the hotel's most dramatic interior moment — a working government safe whose original doors remain in place. Walking through the colonnaded corridors, past neo-Renaissance cantilevered balconies and Victorian copper-trimmed rooflines, makes a case for Perth's own historical weight that is easy to underestimate from the outside.

COMO Hotels and Resorts operates properties that emphasise wellness, restraint, and architectural sensitivity over scale. That group identity shapes The Treasury in measurable ways: 48 rooms is a deliberate limit rather than a constraint, and the decision to retain the original internal walls during restoration means no two rooms share the same dimensions, orientation, or natural light. For travellers accustomed to the standardised floor plans of international chain hotels, the variation is genuinely noticeable. Architect Kerry Hill, whose work across the Pacific Rim favoured calm materiality over display, designed the interiors in pale earth tones , a discipline that keeps the building's own bones readable rather than obscured.

The Dining Programme: Wildflower and the State Buildings Complex

Perth's restaurant scene has developed significantly over the past decade, and the hotel's dining offer sits at a meaningful point in that progression. Wildflower, on the fourth floor, is widely regarded as one of the city's leading restaurants, drawing on Western Australian produce with a menu approach rooted in the state's native flora and seasonal rhythms. The terrace looks out over Swan River, and the elevation makes it one of the more considered vantage points in the CBD. For guests who arrive without a dinner reservation, the Wildflower Terrace functions as a viable sundowner destination in its own right, separate from the dining room proper.

At ground level, Post draws on French-inspired cuisine and similarly commits to Western Australian sourcing , avocados, mandarins, passionfruit, and Chenin Blanc from the Swan Valley figure across the menu. The approach across both restaurants reflects a broader tendency in Australian hotel dining: using proximity to exceptional regional produce as a primary differentiator, rather than importing culinary frameworks wholesale from European or Asian models. See our full Perth restaurants guide for more on how the city's dining scene maps onto its neighbourhoods.

The State Buildings complex that surrounds the hotel extends the food and drink offer considerably. The grand Postal Hall, Thai restaurant Long Chim, Petition wine bar, a Beer Corner, Pooles Temple, Sue Lewis Chocolatier, and Telegram Coffee all operate within the precinct. This means guests are effectively embedded in a curated food-and-drink destination rather than a standalone hotel block , an arrangement that makes the property more useful for longer stays than a single-restaurant hotel of comparable scale.

Rooms, Suites, and the Minibar Question

The 48 rooms and suites divide across urban and green views, with some offering Juliet or walkout balconies. Standout room features include oversized opening windows, custom furnishings, truss ceilings, fireplaces in select rooms, and open bathrooms with heated travertine stone floors and German-made Kaldewei Duo freestanding bathtubs. The minibar is stocked with Riedel glassware, Limeburners whisky (a Western Australian single malt), Sue Lewis chocolate, and Vasse Felix wines , a more intentional selection than the generic spirits and soft drinks found in most hotel minibars at this price point, with a starting rate from approximately AU$576 per night.

Art appears selectively. The walls of the Cape Arid Rooms carry illustrations from the Cape Arid Collection by botanical artists Philippa and Alex Nikulinsky, derived from their documented trek through Cape Arid National Park. These are available for purchase, either as individual prints or as a collected volume , the kind of local referencing that differentiates a property genuinely engaged with its geography from one that simply imports generic luxury finishing.

Elsewhere, the rooms are free of artwork by design, with sculptural bronze-cast mirrors by artist David Brazier serving as the primary decorative statement. The effect allows the original architecture , cornicing, proportions, window height , to register without competition.

COMO Shambhala and the Wellness Tier

COMO's wellness programming travels across its properties under the Shambhala Urban Escape format, and The Treasury's iteration sits within the hotel's interior with a spa design that incorporates the building's original safe doors as a visual anchor. The indoor swimming pool and fitness centre are integrated into the same level, following the group's model of treating wellness as a coherent programme rather than an amenity list. This positions The Treasury alongside properties like Gleneagles in Auchterarder or Lime Wood in Lyndhurst, which similarly treat their spa as a core proposition rather than a secondary feature. COMO Shambhala at Home products appear in the bathrooms, creating continuity between the in-room and treatment experiences.

Practical Considerations

COMO The Treasury sits at 1 Cathedral Avenue in Perth's CBD, within the State Buildings precinct. Valet parking is available for hotel guests with applicable fees. The property holds a 94.5-point rating on La Liste's 2026 Leading Hotels list, which places it among a small number of Australian hotels assessed at that level. Google reviewer ratings sit at 4.7 across 584 reviews, a figure that holds across a meaningful sample size. Given Perth's position as a long-haul destination from most of the world's major travel hubs, the hotel rewards planning: booking well ahead is advisable, particularly for rooms with Swan River views or for dining at Wildflower, which operates independently from hotel reservations. Properties in COMO's portfolio that share a similar heritage-building-meets-refined-wellness positioning , among them Claridge's in London and Estelle Manor in North Leigh , tend to book ahead on signature rooms, and the same logic applies here given the limited key count and the distinctiveness of individual rooms. For reference on comparable heritage-sensitive properties in other markets, Muir, A Luxury Collection Hotel, Halifax and King Street Townhouse Hotel in Manchester follow a similar model of adaptive reuse in a civic building context. Other properties drawing on converted heritage architecture across different scales include Hope Street Hotel in Liverpool, Glasgow Grosvenor Hotel, and Babington House in Kilmersdon. At the boutique end of heritage conversion, Burts Hotel in Melrose and Dun Aluinn in Aberfeldy offer a different scale of the same principle. Further afield, Aman New York and The Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City represent how the heritage-adaptive luxury model translates at a North American scale, while Aman Venice anchors the European end of the same conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the leading suite at COMO The Treasury?

COMO The Treasury's upper-tier suites are its most architecturally distinct rooms, featuring fireplaces, Swan River views, and bathrooms described as palatial in scale, with Kaldewei Duo freestanding bathtubs and heated travertine stone floors. Because original internal walls were retained during restoration, these suites differ in layout and proportion from one another rather than following a standard floor plan. The property's La Liste 2026 rating of 94.5 points and its starting nightly rate of approximately AU$576 position it within the upper bracket of Perth luxury accommodation. Contacting the hotel directly is advisable for suite availability and configuration specifics.

Why do people choose COMO The Treasury over other Perth hotels?

The combination of a fully restored 19th-century civic building, a 48-room limit, and an embedded food-and-drink precinct (including Wildflower restaurant and the broader State Buildings complex) creates a proposition that Perth's larger-footprint competitors do not replicate. The La Liste 94.5-point recognition and a 4.7 Google rating across 584 reviews both support its position as one of the city's most consistently regarded properties. For travellers who prioritise architectural character and culinary access over pool decks and event facilities, the trade-offs are direct.

How far ahead should I book COMO The Treasury?

With 48 rooms total and Wildflower operating as one of Perth's most sought-after restaurant bookings independently of hotel stays, the window for securing preferred dates , particularly rooms with Swan River or green views, or rooms with fireplaces , is longer than at larger properties. Perth's growing profile as a long-haul destination has tightened availability during peak periods. Booking two to three months ahead is a reasonable baseline; for specific suite categories or dining reservations aligned with your stay dates, earlier is consistently the safer approach.

Who tends to like COMO The Treasury most?

The property draws travellers for whom architecture and food access carry more weight than resort amenities or loyalty programme benefits. The 48-room scale, the distinct room configurations, and Wildflower's standing in Perth's dining scene attract guests treating the hotel as a destination in its own right rather than a base for touring. At a starting rate of around AU$576 per night and a La Liste score of 94.5, it sits in the premium tier of Perth accommodation , comparable, in profile if not geography, to properties like The Newt in Somerset or Hell Bay Hotel in Bryher, where the setting and food story carry as much weight as conventional luxury metrics.

What makes the dining experience at COMO The Treasury distinctive within Perth's hotel restaurant scene?

Wildflower's use of Western Australian native flora as a menu framework, combined with its fourth-floor position and Swan River terrace views, places it in a different category from the hotel restaurant as amenity. The ground-floor Post restaurant and the wider State Buildings precinct , including Long Chim, Petition, and Sue Lewis Chocolatier , mean that guests at COMO The Treasury have access to a curated dining and retail complex without leaving the building's footprint. This embedded multi-venue model is less common in Australian hotels than in comparable Asian or European properties, and it adds meaningful day-to-day utility for guests staying multiple nights. The La Liste 2026 recognition of 94.5 points applies to the hotel as a whole, reflecting the dining programme as a component of that overall assessment.