Four Seasons Hotel Lion Palace St. Petersburg - Former Residence Of Princess Lobanova-Rostovskaya

There is a photograph taken of you on arrival and placed on your nightstand by the time you reach your suite. The card alongside it reads: "We are celebrating you." This tells you almost everything you need to know about La Residence. The hotel - part of the family-owned Royal …

You cross an active airport runway to get there. The building you're sleeping in was built in Malaysia and transported across the ocean on a ship. Barbary macaque monkeys live on the limestone rock looming outside your window. And you're permanently at sea - except you're not, because the vessel …

Somewhere between your second dip in a thermal pool and watching the sun dissolve into the Tyrrhenian Sea, Ischia stops feeling like a place you're visiting and starts feeling like somewhere you might never want to leave. San Montano Resort & Spa has a way of doing that to people. …

There's a moment, sometime between your first glass of Pessac-Léognan and your third hour of doing absolutely nothing by an indoor pool, when Les Sources de Caudalie stops feeling like a hotel and starts feeling suspiciously like someone's very beautiful home that you've been allowed to borrow for a few …

Another Place, The Machrie does not announce itself. It accumulates - a golden eagle banking over the Atlantic, a genuine Tracey Emin hanging next to your breakfast table - until the place stops feeling like a hotel and starts feeling like a very convincing dream. Set on the Isle of …

Towering over Lucerne from its hilltop position like something plucked from a Bavarian fantasy, Hotel Château Gütsch is the sort of place that makes you stop and stare from street level. This 19th-century folly castle, modeled after Neuschwanstein, offers what every Swiss hotel promises but few truly deliver: genuinely spectacular …

The Landmark London defies every stereotype about stuffy London hotels. The Landmark London might sit on one of the capital's busiest roads, but step inside and you'll find yourself in something closer to a tropical conservatory than a traditional British establishment. With towering palm trees reaching toward an eight-story glass …

Rising from the highest point of Lerma, the Parador de Lerma commands attention from miles away. This isn't just another historic hotel - it's a 17th-century ducal palace where royalty once played, Napoleon Bonaparte laid his head, and Lope de Vega premiered his theatrical works. Today, you can experience this …

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 …

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 …