The Edit
Our most opinionated lists: the hotels we'd send you to for a specific reason, whether that's a once-in-a-lifetime pool or a honeymoon you'll never stop talking about.
Pools Worth the Airfare
Some swimming pools are amenities. These are destinations, carved into cliffs, cantilevered over oceans, wrapped around ancient rock.
Cliffside RetreatBelmond Hotel Caruso
A thousand feet above the Tyrrhenian Sea, a former bishop's palace holds the most photographed infinity pool in Italy, and a view that ruins you for anywhere else.
From $1,300 / night
Desert RetreatAmangiri
Aman built into the raw geology of the Colorado Plateau: a minimalist compound where a central pool curls around a 165-million-year-old rock.
From $3,400 / night
IconMarina Bay Sands
Three towers, a ship balanced on top, and the most famous rooftop pool on earth. It's a spectacle, and it earns the hype.
From $520 / night
Riviera LegendHôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc
Twenty-two acres of pine and palm on the tip of Cap d'Antibes, a seawater pool blasted into the rock, and a cash-only history of impossible glamour.
From $1,800 / night
The Great Grande Dames
The historic institutions that more or less invented the luxury hotel, and still set the standard a century later.
Grande DameThe Ritz Paris
After a four-year restoration, the address on Place Vendôme is once again the most romantic (and most photographed) hotel in France.
From $1,400 / night
Grande DameClaridge's
Royalty checks in under pseudonyms, the foyer pours the best afternoon tea in London, and the service runs like a Swiss watch in white gloves.
From $990 / night
Grande DameThe Peninsula Hong Kong
Since 1928 the Peninsula has been Kowloon's answer to the grand hotels of Europe: a colonnaded lobby, harbour views, and a helipad on the roof.
From $780 / night
Grande DameThe Plaza
A French Renaissance landmark at Fifth and 59th: equal parts fairy tale, film set, and living piece of New York mythology.
From $895 / night
Where to Honeymoon
Rooms and views engineered for romance, from a floating palace in Udaipur to a jungle island in the Baa Atoll.
Palace HotelThe Oberoi Udaivilas
Built the way a maharana's residence would have been, with domes, courtyards and reflecting pools mirrored in the lake. Regularly voted among the finest hotels on earth.
From $900 / night
Barefoot LuxurySoneva Fushi
The resort that taught the Maldives that barefoot could mean luxurious. Vast Robinson Crusoe villas, an open-air cinema, and some of the best diving in the Indian Ocean.
From $2,200 / night
Cliffside RetreatBelmond Hotel Caruso
A thousand feet above the Tyrrhenian Sea, a former bishop's palace holds the most photographed infinity pool in Italy, and a view that ruins you for anywhere else.
From $1,300 / night
Palace HotelLa Mamounia
Behind the ramparts of the medina sits a 200-year-old garden and a hotel that has hosted everyone from Winston Churchill to the entire fashion set.
From $750 / night
For the Design-Obsessed
Architecture you can sleep inside: monastic concrete in the desert, a modernist ark on the Atlantic, silence engineered above Tokyo.
Desert RetreatAmangiri
Aman built into the raw geology of the Colorado Plateau: a minimalist compound where a central pool curls around a 165-million-year-old rock.
From $3,400 / night
Design OutpostFogo Island Inn
On stilts at the far edge of Newfoundland, a social-enterprise hotel where every dollar goes back into the community and every window frames raw, roaring ocean.
From $1,975 / night
Urban SanctuaryAman Tokyo
Thirty-three floors above Otemachi, Aman took the top of a corporate tower and made it the calmest room in Tokyo. It works because of everything it leaves out.
From $1,150 / night
Urban RetreatPark Hyatt Tokyo
Fifty-two floors up, the New York Bar still swings, the pool still floats under a glass vault, and the whole place still hums with cinematic melancholy.
From $720 / night
Into the Wild
Luxury that comes with a landscape: leopards, granite towers, drifting icebergs and giraffes at the window.
Safari LodgeSingita Sabi Sand
Conservation-first safari at its most refined: glass-walled suites, a private reserve full of leopard, and service that feels almost telepathic.
From $2,100 / night
Wilderness LodgeExplora Patagonia
Inside Torres del Paine National Park, an all-inclusive base camp for serious hikers, with guided treks by day and a spa over the water by night.
From $2,600 / night
Boutique ManorGiraffe Manor
A creeper-clad country house on the edge of Nairobi where a herd of endangered Rothschild's giraffes pokes its heads through the windows at breakfast.
From $1,450 / night
Design OutpostFogo Island Inn
On stilts at the far edge of Newfoundland, a social-enterprise hotel where every dollar goes back into the community and every window frames raw, roaring ocean.
From $1,975 / night