Art Hotels

Louis XV ordered the building. Ange-Jacques Gabriel gave it the long colonnaded front that still faces Place de la Concorde, and it stayed a private palace for well over a century before opening as a hotel in 1909.

A four-year restoration kept the doors shut until 2017. Rosewood now runs it, and the work brought in several decorators rather than a single house look, so salons and suites shift in mood from one floor to the next. Two apartments on the upper level were designed by Karl Lagerfeld.

What you come for is the fabric of the place. Carved panelling, marble stairs, tall windows with the obelisk framed in them.

Curves come first. The Fontenay stands on the western shore of the Outer Alster, and architect Jan Störmer drew it as three overlapping circles wrapped in white glazed ceramic. There is hardly a straight wall in the plan.

Inside, a tall atrium opens up through the middle of the building. Rooms follow the rounded outline, so windows look out over the lake, the park along its edge, or the city's church spires.

It opened in 2018. The spa and pool sit on an upper floor with the water in view, and a rooftop restaurant looks the same way.

Florentines climb Fiesole for the view. Halfway up the hill is Villa San Michele, a fifteenth-century Franciscan monastery whose façade has long been linked with Michelangelo.

The cloister, the loggia and the old refectory all survive as part of the hotel. Some rooms occupy former monks' cells; others open onto terraced gardens that step down the slope among olive trees and potted lemons.

Look south from the loggia and the whole of Florence is spread across the valley, Brunelleschi's dome in the middle of it. Belmond runs the property.