Three hotels in this category

Art Hotels

Hotels where history, collections and setting carry as much weight as the room.

Ennetbürgen, Switzerland

Villa Honegg

Villa Honegg sits on the Bürgenstock, high above Lake Lucerne. It opened as a hotel in 1905. After a long renovation it reopened in 2011, and it is still small enough to feel private.

The outdoor pool is the best-known feature. It is heated all year and built right at the edge of the slope, so the water seems to run straight into the lake far below. Inside, the Belle Époque building has modern furnishings and few distractions. The main artwork here is the view, and most of the windows look out on it.

Opened 1905
Above Lake Lucerne
Year-round heated pool
Bürgenstock

Cusco, Peru

Hotel Monasterio

Seminarians studied here before travellers ever slept here. Hotel Monasterio, now run by Belmond, occupies the former Seminary of San Antonio Abad, a colonial complex begun in the late sixteenth century on Inca foundations in the centre of Cusco.

The art is part of the building. Paintings from the Cusco School hang along stone cloisters, and the old chapel still has its gilded baroque altarpiece. The rooms open onto quiet courtyards. Because Cusco sits at high altitude, some rooms can be supplied with oxygen-enriched air.

Former seminary
Cusco School paintings
Baroque chapel
Belmond

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Pulitzer Amsterdam

It takes up a whole block. Pulitzer Amsterdam joins twenty-five seventeenth- and eighteenth-century merchants' buildings between the Prinsengracht and the Keizersgracht. Inside, corridors and small stairs link them into one hotel.

Designer Jacu Strauss led a full redesign in 2016. He mixed Dutch Golden Age references with bold colour, collected objects and contemporary art. A garden courtyard sits in the middle, away from the canal traffic. The hotel also keeps a 1909 saloon boat for trips on the water.

25 canal-side buildings
Jacu Strauss interiors
Garden courtyard
Historic saloon boat