Hotels

In the middle of Utah's red rock country, where the landscape looks like Mars had a particularly good day, sits Ofland Escalante - a place that makes you wonder why anyone ever thought camping had to involve sleeping on the ground and eating beans from a can. This isn't your …

In a city where every canal-side hotel room comes with a premium price tag, one of Amsterdam's most unusual places to rest your head sits 46 meters (150 feet) above the water on KNSM Island. What was once Figee Crane 2868 - a hulking piece of industrial machinery that spent …

The road from Lisbon airport winds through increasingly peaceful countryside before depositing you at what feels like the edge of the world. Here, perched on the cliffs of Praia Grande, sits the Arribas Sintra Hotel – a modest 4-star establishment that happens to hold the rather grand title of mainland …

On a tiny island in Lake Huron, where the clip-clop of horse hooves replaces the rumble of engines and fudge shops line cobblestone streets like something from a Dickens novel, sits one of America's most gloriously anachronistic hotels. The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island isn't just a place to rest …

The stone walls are thick enough to have withstood demolition attempts in the 1930s, and the barred windows remain resolutely in place. But these days, the only thing being executed at Bodmin Jail is an ambitious vision to transform one of Britain's most forbidding historical sites into a luxury hotel …

The first thing you notice isn't the geodesic domes dotting the hillside like something from a sci-fi film, or even the sweeping views across the Waitaki Valley that stretch endlessly toward jagged mountain peaks. It's the silence. The kind of profound quiet that makes city dwellers suddenly aware of their …

On a scrap of windswept rock in the Swedish archipelago, where the Baltic meets the North Sea, stands what might be the world's most improbable hotel. Pater Noster sits on Hamneskär island, five nautical miles from anywhere you'd recognize as civilization, crowned by a 32-meter lighthouse that has been guiding …

Picture this: you're sipping a cocktail surrounded by whitewashed walls and blue-domed architecture, but instead of the Aegean Sea stretching before you, it's the Indonesian waters where Komodo dragons patrol their ancient territory. The Loccal Collection Hotel in Labuan Bajo has committed fully to this geographical identity crisis, and somehow, …

The gravel road seems to go on forever, winding through dense forest for what feels like an eternity before you begin to wonder if your satnav has led you astray. But that's rather the point at Patagonia Camp – this isn't the sort of place you stumble upon by accident. …

Deep in Rajasthan's dusty heart, where the Aravalli Hills rise like ancient guardians from the desert floor, something rather extraordinary has happened to a 700-year-old fort. What was once home to real royalty now hosts a different sort of aristocracy: the well-heeled traveler with a taste for the theatrical. Six …

Checking into a hotel room that once flew at 30,000 feet requires a certain suspension of disbelief. The Natur Air Suite, a 1968 Fokker 27 converted into Italy's first airplane hotel, sits in the countryside near Brembate di Sopra, an hour from Milan. Gianpiero Bianchi discovered the aircraft through an …

What started as a house-hunting expedition in 2002 has morphed into one of Morocco's most photographed properties. Howell James and Vanessa Branson thought they were buying a holiday home in Marrakech's ancient medina. Instead, they accidentally acquired a string of crumbling buildings that would become El Fenn – a maximalist …

The concept sounds like something dreamed up by a particularly ambitious theme park designer: a hotel where you can swim alongside real penguins, separated only by a curved glass wall. Yet here in Lübbenau, deep in the wetlands of Brandenburg's Spreewald region, the Spreewelten Hotel has turned this improbable vision …

In the hills above Guatapé's rainbow houses, couples are sleeping suspended in the air inside white spheres that locals call 'lunas' - and it's about as otherworldly as it sounds. The boat cuts through the emerald waters of Guatapé reservoir, past the drowned church towers and submerged streets that disappeared …

Walk through Rome's historic center, past centuries-old churches and crumbling ruins, and you'll eventually find yourself confronted by an unusual sight: a pair of doormen who look more like nightclub bouncers than hotel staff. Welcome to Romeo Roma, where getting through the front door requires more than just wandering in …

On the precipice of nowhere, where ancient stone meets endless blue, sits a hotel born from one man's obsession with a ruined windmill and a love affair with isolation. Folegandros – try saying it without stumbling over the syllables – remains mercifully untouched by the cruise ship hordes that descend …

On a rocky precipice above the Aegean, where the island of Crete drops dramatically into sapphire waters, sits a hotel that takes its name quite literally. Acro Suites – from the Greek 'akros' meaning 'on the edge' – perches precariously on the clifftops of Mononaftis Bay, and sisters Danae and …

High above Lake Brienz, where waterfalls crash down mountainsides and the sound of rushing water mingles with the rattle of Europe's oldest funicular railway, sits a hotel that nearly became a car park. Well, not quite a car park, but something almost as tragic: a concrete "jumbo chalet" complex that …

There's something utterly surreal about sipping Turkish coffee while the Great Pyramid looms outside your breakfast window like an ancient stone grandfather, quietly judging your choice of cereal. At the Marriott Mena House Cairo, this beautiful morning ritual is just another Tuesday. Perched at the foot of the Giza pyramids, …

You know something's different about 1 Hotel Central Park the moment you clock its ivy-strangled facade on Sixth Avenue. While neighboring buildings flash their steel and glass credentials, this place is practically photosynthesizing – 36,000 plants cling to its exterior like nature's own Instagram filter. Step inside and you're hit …