Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek

The Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek most definitely lives up to its name: it doesn’t seem like a hotel, but an extravagant house. The 143 room structure was built, in 1925, as a residence for cotton baron Sheppard King, and is the ultimate in old-fashioned Dallas opulence. Here, you live it up like the tycoons of the past. A lot of people call it the best hotel in the States.

Much of The Mansion is an Italian fantasy as imagined with American big bucks due to King’s infatuation with the Renaissance. Everything is in excess. Stained glass and fountains surround the house, and imported marble covers the floors both upstairs and down. There are silver leaf 19th-century Spanish cathedral doors in the bar. The terrace is tiled with the life and times of Don Quixote mosaic. Massive cherubs from Germany hang on mantelpieces. There’s even a duplicate of the fireplace at England’s Bromley castle. Ostentatious, yes. Tasteful, possibly not, but awe-inspiring it certainly is.

The rooms, naturally, are enormous—the smallest offering a full 450 square feet. And you’ll enjoy service trained to accommodate the rich, the finicky, and the eccentric. Leave your clothes on the floor, and they’ll fold and hang them—even steam those linen trousers, and make sure there’s a padded hanger for your angora dress.

Meanwhile, The Mansion’s restaurant, currently being renovated, is one of the best in Dallas. If features the the acclaimed contemporary American cuisine of chef John Tesar.

Many say that The Mansion is the only way to do this part of Texas, where one out of three of the inhabitants are millionaires. If you’re not one already, you’ll definitely feel like one here.