1. ESMÉ MIAMI BEACH — Miami Beach, Florida
For some travelers, the big Miami Beach hotels, with their see-and-be-seen atmosphere, can be a bit much. Just one block from the Collins Avenue hotel strip is something subtler: Esmé Miami Beach is a Spanish-Mediterranean gem whose bohemian-luxe interiors establish a warm and slightly retro mood — one that’s got nothing to do, for once, with mid-century modernism.
2. VICO MILANO — Milan, Italy
The first wave of Milanese boutique hotels were grand gestures that represented Italy’s design capital to the world. Vico Milano, by contrast, is a more personal vision, but no less stylish — its public spaces are dazzling, filled with design furniture and contemporary art, while its seven rooms and suites are handsome in a more relaxed way, delicately balanced between sparse simplicity and organic warmth.
3. RANCHO CAYMUS INN — Rutherford, California
California’s wine country is full of architectural homages to Europe, and this one, built in the 1980s by salt heiress Mary Tilden Morton, is a hacienda-style tribute to the Spanish countryside, built from timber reclaimed from a 19th-century barn. In its current life as a luxury boutique hotel, the Rancho Caymus Inn remains somewhat intimate, weighing in at a mere 26 rooms and suites.
4. COMMUNAL PLEKHANOVI — Tbilisi, Georgia
Tbilisi is now home to some of the most fully realized and authentically unique boutique hotels in the world — case in point, the Communal hotels. They make use of antique townhouses in some of the city’s most desirable old neighborhoods. In the case of Communal Plekhanovi, that’s Chugureti, a hip, creative district a short distance from Marjanishvili Square and Tbilisi State University.
5. FERA PALACE HOTEL — Salvador, Brazil
There’s no city in Brazil or anywhere else quite like Salvador, and the 1934 Art Deco–style Fera Palace Hotel is a local treasure. In some ways it’s still the same grand hotel it was during its midcentury heyday, when it hosted Carmen Miranda, Pablo Neruda, and Orson Welles; look closer, though, and you’ll see a hotel that has kept pace with the times.
Hero image : Fera Palace Hotel
