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The scorched carpet has been ripped up and replaced, the smoke-stained walls wear a fresh coat of paint, and the swimming pool where desperate refugees came to drink the stagnant water has been cleaned and refilled.
From the fourth-floor restaurant, where waiters serve grilled fish as a jazz saxophonist plays, guests at the refurbished Hotel des Mille Collines enjoy a panoramic view of Rwanda's tree-studded capital, Kigali.
But memories are not erased as easily. "There were people sleeping everywhere," the concierge, Zozo, recalled. "There was no water. It was filthy here. In the city, guns were shooting - boom, boom - and there was smoke rising."
In 1994, as genocidal violence swept Rwanda, the four-star hotel became a sanctuary for 700 Tutsis whose lives were saved largely by the guile of the manager, Paul Rusesabagina.
The remarkable story of the Mille Collines, where not a single life was lost during the 100 days of slaughter, is now an Oscar-nominated Hollywood film starring Don Cheadle as Rusesabagina. It opens in the UK next week.
Elsewhere in Rwanda, churches and stadiums that terrified Tutsis believed would be a place of refuge were turned into places of mass murder.
Even at the Mille Collines, bullets were fired into the lobby and a shell landed on the first floor. Militiamen made regular attempts to clear out those seeking safety.
The refugees survived through the wits of the manager, a Hutu, whose wife Tatiana, played in the film by British actress Sophie Okonedo, was a Tutsi. He bartered fine cheeses, wine and cognac from company stores to keep the killers at bay.
"The UN was here but they did nothing," said Zozo, a stocky man in navy blue livery, who still welcomes guests through the glass double doors. "Monsieur Paul did everything."
Within the 113-room, five-storey hotel, a micro-society established itself. The hotel kitchens provided meals of beans and rice for refugees; a priest celebrated mass and conducted marriages in the conference room; there was a doctor and nurses, who helped deliver a baby in room 216.
In the early days after the blood-letting began, on April 7 1994, the hotel was the assembly point for western expatriates.
It became a magnet for middle-class Tutsis, who hoped the presence of foreigners might save their lives. "We thought that would be our protection, the fact that the hotel was a place for whites," said radio journalist Thomas Kamilindi, who got to the hotel on April 14.
Evacuated
But within the first few days, the expatriates were evacuated, and the Rwandans were forced to rely on their own ingenuity and contacts.
The Mille Collines was a place of shelter for the well-connected and the wealthy rather than the masses. "There were lawyers, doctors, journalists and civil servants here," said Mr Kamilindi, whose elder daughter Igihozo, then five, was murdered in the genocide.
"There were simple people here too, but they were people who had been brought here by their bosses."
More middle-class refugees joined them. As it became clear that churches would not be safe, some wealthy Tutsis bribed militiamen for safe passage to the Mille Collines. Part of the reason for the survival of these refugees was the connections they still maintained.
Even as Rwanda plunged into the abyss, guests such as François Xavier Nsanzuwera, a former attorney general and moderate Hutu, used their contacts in an attempt to raise international attention.
They were able to communicate because the génocidaires had cut the phone lines but failed to cut off the fax, which could also be used to make voice calls.
"We formed a committee. We wrote and sent faxes," said Kamilindi. "François Xavier was a lawyer and a human rights activist. He knew many different numbers. We sent faxes to the White House, the Elysée Palace and several human rights organisations."
The journalist went on French radio to describe conditions in Kigali. The interview prompted the Rwandan army to send a soldier to kill him; the soldier, a former childhood friend, spared his life.
As the genocide raged on, spanning three months from its start in April till early July, conditions got steadily worse.
"By June it was terrible. The electricity was cut, and the generator was not working," said Abias Musonera, 47, the hotel's technical manager, who survived and has stayed on in his old job. "People uprooted the bushes outside, and chopped the hotel doors down to make firewood. They lit fires to cook, even in the corridors, and burned holes in the carpets."
Musonera's wife, Immaculée, gave birth to son Moise, now 11, in a hotel room.
As time went on, the lack of water grew increasingly dire. Water from the pool was rationed out to those in the hotel, who drank it even after Hutu soldiers urinated in it, saying: "This is just water for Inyenzi [cockroaches, the term for Tutsis]."
People were crowded 10 to a bedroom, which cost $125-a-night before the genocide began. More slept in the corridors, the lobby and in the bar by the pool.
Whenever the refugees in the hotel were threatened by militiamen, the manager and other inmates used contacts in the Rwandan military to ward off the danger.
Rusesabagina used alcohol to buy off Hutu leaders such as the army commander, Major General Augustin Bizimungu. He persuaded such senior officers to restrain more junior commanders who wanted to exterminate the hotel's occupants.
Kamilindi said: "What Paul did was extraordinary. He gave us the hotel for free. When the water in the pool ran out, he sent a lorry to get more water, I don't know where from.
"Each time they menaced the hotel, he called the army officers, he opened the cellars and he distributed the wine and the champagne."
Bizarrely, even while it sheltered people who were targets for the Hutu extremists, the Mille Collines was a haven for the families of some alleged génocidaires too. This may have provided some protection.
Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, who presided over the Sainte Famille cathedral where Tutsis were butchered, entrusted his elderly mother to the hotel's protection - because she was a Tutsi.
The Catholic priest, who carried a revolver in his belt during the genocide, is accused by human rights groups of colluding with the killers.
Robert Kajuga, national president of the Hutu extremist militia, the Interahamwe, checked his brother Wyclif into the Mille Collines for the same reason.
The Kajuga brothers were from a Tutsi family whose father had acquired Hutu identity papers for his family, and Robert knew even his brother's life was at risk.
A degree of protection was also provided by the UN, whose commander, Roméo Dallaire, is played by Nick Nolte in the film. A UN armoured car was stationed outside the hotel's reception, and the blue flag was flown. Survivors believe this was because UN officers were staying at the hotel too. "They were protecting their own," said Zozo, real name Wellars Bizumunumyi, 50, whose wife and four children were killed in 1994.
Rusesabagina now lives in Brussels and runs a trucking firm in Zambia. Last month he told the American People magazine: "What happened in Rwanda is now happening in Darfur, in the Congo, in all of these places they are butchering innocent civilians. It is high time we know that a human life in Africa is as important as a human life in the west."
The Mille Collines is up for sale, following the bankruptcy of its Belgian parent company Sabena, but executives say none of the staff will be fired. "I would rather lose my life than see the people here lose their jobs," said Christian Van Buggenhout, president of the trustees administering the bankrupt firm.
The hotel is still a place of inaccessible luxury for most Rwandans. Room rates range from $88 (£49) to $202 (£112) a night, in a country where 80% live on less than $2 a day.
Despite this, the story of the hotel has become a small symbol of hope amid the horrors of the genocide. Another film set in the hotel is being made. It is based on Canadian writer Gil Courtemanche's novel A Sunday by the Pool in Kigali, which tells the story of a foreign journalist's relationship with a Tutsi waitress.
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