I should declare an interest. The Château Laurier stands ten minutes from the desk where this magazine was founded, and I have walked past its limestone turrets in every season for longer than I care to admit. When we published our very first issue in 2009, this was the hotel on the cover. So I review it as a neighbour as much as a critic — which means I hold it to a higher standard than almost any hotel in the country, because I know exactly what it can be at its best.

And at its best it is magnificent. Opened in 1912 beside Parliament Hill and the Rideau Canal, it is a National Historic Site that has never been allowed to become a museum. The location is simply unbeatable — the canal, the ByWard Market, Parliament and the National Gallery all within a stroll — and guests say so constantly; one recent visitor called it "the best location in town," with spacious, clean rooms and a fast check-in. The Art Deco swimming pool is one of the loveliest interior spaces in Ottawa, a fact that still catches first-time guests by surprise, and the concierge desk, when it is on form, is a genuine asset: a reader wrote warmly of a concierge named Samuel who "made us feel right at home." That, at a landmark, is the whole point.

The grandeur, and the grind

Wilfrid's and Zoe's Lounge remain fixtures of the city's civic life, and the public rooms carry their century with dignity. When the Château Laurier gets it right — a well-kept room, a warm welcome, the canal glittering below — there is no better address in the capital, and it is why so many guests return year after year.

A landmark earns its stars not on its grand days but on its ordinary ones, and here the ordinary days are where the work still lies.

Where it falls short of itself

I cannot, in good conscience, pretend the record is uniformly kind, because it is not. A run of recent guests describe a hotel coasting a little on its history: rooms that are smaller and darker than the photographs suggest, thin walls, and — more than once — a musty note, peeling paint or visible dust in rooms that should be immaculate at this level. Others found the lobby overcrowded, the linens less than fresh, and, most damning for a grand hotel, front-desk staff who came across as dismissive and valet service that stumbled. These are not the complaints of fussy travellers; they are the complaints of people who expected a landmark and met a tired one. The gap between the five-star reviews and the two-star reviews here is wider than it should be, and closing it is a matter of upkeep and attention, not architecture.

How to stay well here

Book a renovated or higher-category room rather than an entry-level one, and do not rely on the online photographs — ask the hotel directly what you are getting. Lead with what is unarguable: the location, the pool, the public rooms and the canal at your feet. Approached that way, the Château Laurier still gives you the capital's grandest welcome; approached blind, it can disappoint.