Art Hotels

THE PLACE | The hotel occupies the upper part of an office tower in Otemachi, in the business district beside the Imperial Palace grounds. Guests arrive at street level, ride up, and step out into a lobby that opens through several storeys, which is the reverse of how a tower usually treats its visitors.

THE BUILDING | The interiors were designed by Kerry Hill Architects, who worked with paper, stone and dark timber to make a Japanese room at the head of a modern office building. The tall lobby, lit through washi panels, is what the hotel publishes as its central space, and the guest rooms sit around it.

WHY IT IS LIKE THAT | A tower gives height and a view, and nothing else this kind of hotel wants. Building a Japanese interior inside it made the height count for something other than an outlook, and the tall room turns arrival into the point of the design.

WHAT IT ASKS OF YOU | Nothing of your shoes, and a certain amount of your attention. The entrance and the lobby are on different levels, so arrival takes longer than at a street-door hotel, and guests who are in a hurry tend to find the building unhelpful.

WORTH A NOTE | Entry is through an office tower lobby, so allow time between the street and the hotel when you arrive.

THE PLACE | The Okura stands in Toranomon, across from the American embassy, and it has been part of the diplomatic quarter for most of its life. The main building was taken down and rebuilt, and the hotel that reopened carries the older one inside it rather than replacing it outright.

THE BUILDING | The rebuilding reproduced the main lobby of the original hotel, with the hanging light fittings, the low tables and the screen wall arranged as they had been. The hotel publishes the room as a faithful re-creation, made after a long public argument about whether the old building should have come down at all.

WHY IT IS LIKE THAT | The lobby had become the most defended interior in Tokyo, and demolishing the rest of the hotel without it would have cost the house its reason to exist. Reproducing the room was the answer the owners gave, and the new building was planned around that decision.

WHAT IT ASKS OF YOU | Very little beyond a willingness to sit still. The lobby is arranged for waiting rather than for passing through, and guests who use it as a route to the lift miss the only part of the hotel that was argued over in public.

WORTH A NOTE | The lobby is a reconstruction rather than the original room, which is worth knowing before you look for age in it.

THE PLACE | Riad Fes is inside the medina of Fez, which is entered on foot and not by car. The building turns its back on the lane: a plain door, then a courtyard open to the sky, then further courtyards, so the hotel reveals itself only after you are already inside it.

THE BUILDING | The hotel is made of adjoining riads, the courtyard buildings of the old city, joined and adapted for guests. Its interiors are published as traditional Fassi work, carried out in the crafts the city is known for, and the plan is the one the buildings already had rather than a new arrangement.

WHY IT IS LIKE THAT | A courtyard house was built for hot days and cool nights, and for a city where privacy faced inward. Adapting such buildings rather than replacing them keeps the medina intact, and it gives the hotel rooms that a new structure could not.

WHAT IT ASKS OF YOU | Arriving on foot, and letting the hotel arrange the last part of the journey. The medina is a maze by design, luggage cannot be wheeled through it easily, and guests are asked to say when they will arrive so somebody can meet them.

WORTH A NOTE | Cars stop at the edge of the medina, so plan the final approach and the departure with the hotel beforehand.

THE PLACE | The lodge stands in a pine wood above the Paro valley, on the way up towards the ruined fortress that overlooks it. Vehicles stop below and the last part is a walk through the trees, so the building is not seen until you are almost at the door.

THE BUILDING | It is built in the Bhutanese manner, with rammed earth walls carrying the structure and timber used through the interiors. Amankora publishes the lodge as one of several it operates across the valleys of Bhutan, made to be travelled between rather than treated as a single destination.

WHY IT IS LIKE THAT | Rammed earth is what this country has always built with, and it suits a valley of warm days and cold nights. Keeping to it also lets the lodge sit inside a working landscape without announcing itself, which a lodge in a Buddhist valley has reason to do.

WHAT IT ASKS OF YOU | A slower pace than the arrival suggests, because altitude does its own work here. The lodge asks guests to walk in from where vehicles stop, and to treat the wood around it as part of the valley rather than as grounds.

WORTH A NOTE | The approach is on foot through the pines, and the valley sits high enough to be felt on the first day.

THE PLACE | Timeo stands on the hillside directly beneath the ancient Greek theatre at Taormina, with Etna on one side and the bay on the other. The hotel has been there since the town first drew travellers, and its terraces face the same outlook that brought them.

THE BUILDING | The building is a nineteenth-century hotel of the grand kind, stepped down the slope so that its salons open onto terraces at several levels. It is operated by Belmond, and what it publishes about itself is the setting: the theatre above, the gardens around it and the coast below.

WHY IT IS LIKE THAT | Taormina was built on a shelf above the sea, and no flat site is to be had. A hotel here has to climb, and the terraces turn that constraint into the reason to stay, since the outlook is available from almost every part of the house.

WHAT IT ASKS OF YOU | Steps, and a good many of them. The hotel is spread down the hillside rather than along a corridor, and guests are asked to allow time to move between the salons, the gardens and the pool rather than expecting a level walk.

WORTH A NOTE | The town is closed to most traffic, so the last stretch is on foot or by the hotel's own arrangement.

THE PLACE | Palazzo Avino sits in Ravello, which is above the Amalfi coast rather than on it, reached by a road that climbs away from the sea. The building stands at the edge of the town with the drop below it, and the coast is seen from above rather than approached across a beach.

THE BUILDING | The house began as a twelfth-century residence and has been adapted over a long life before becoming a hotel. It is run by the family whose name it carries, and what is published about it concerns the building's age, its terraces and the garden that sits between it and the cliff.

WHY IT IS LIKE THAT | Ravello was settled high up for safety and for air, and every building answers that. A residence of this age was made to be lived in rather than to receive guests, so the hotel occupies rooms arranged for a household and kept when the use changed.

WHAT IT ASKS OF YOU | A head for heights and patience with the road. Guests are asked to leave cars where the town allows, and to accept that the sea, though it is the view from every terrace here, takes a descent to reach.

WORTH A NOTE | Ravello is well above the coast road, and the climb is steep whichever direction you come from.