XVA Art Hotel

Yes, appearances to the contrary, Dubai still has a thriving creative class kicking around. Look no further than the modest Al Fahidi district, once home to 19th-century textile and pearl traders, and still the best window into Dubai’s old character from before the dawn of the tower-crane age. Now it’s a maze of quaint alleyways dotted with galleries, cafés, and boutique hotels; put all three together and you have XVA Art Hotel Dubai.

Mona Hauser, the owner, demonstrates her dedication to local artists and craftspeople everywhere you look, enlisting their design talents to distill the neighborhood’s rich Persian heritage into one building. Public spaces, including three delightfully shady courtyards, feature benchmark visual cues by the dozen: palm motifs, curvilinear arches, original wind towers, and elaborately patterned textiles arrest the gaze wherever it falls. The rooms, just 14 in total, soothe the wearied traveler like plaster-and-palm-beam cocoons, each individually themed by artists like Karim Rashid or Zayan Gandour. Atmospheric touches — draped veils, ornamental dark-wood fixtures, alcoves with earth-tone handicrafts — lend a welcome, homey touch, and deluxe rooms offer private outdoor extensions to watch the world go by at a gentle distance.

Though accommodations are by no means an afterthought, the real action’s downstairs; this is widely held to be one of the best contemporary galleries around, so it’s well worth your time to try to share your stay with an art fair or festival screening. A bustling, vegetarian café should tide you over until you can hunt down a suitable evening meal somewhere in the surrounding streets (no alcohol served here, naturally, but the mint lemonade is impossible to put down). Besides, there’s nothing quite like losing your bearings in the charming chaos of the souqs along Dubai Creek.