There are good hotels, great hotels, and then there are the ones I’d happily cross an ocean for.
The hotels that become part of the reason you take the trip in the first place. The ones you think about long after you’ve unpacked. And, occasionally, the ones that have me checking flights before I’ve even checked my calendar.
This is not a definitive list of the best hotels in Europe. There are far too many extraordinary hotels for that…and my list would probably change by next week.
Instead, consider this my current European edit: hotels with such a strong sense of place, personality, and experience that I think they’re worth planning a trip around.
Hotel Il Pellicano
Porto Ercole, Italy
If I could bottle up the feeling of an Italian summer, I think it would look a lot like Il Pellicano.
Perched above the Mediterranean on the Tuscan coast, this is the Italy of striped umbrellas, rocky swims, long lunches and an Aperol Spritz when you’re still slightly salty from the sea. It’s glamorous, but never in a way that feels like it’s trying particularly hard.
And that’s really the magic of Il Pellicano. There is history here, Slim Aarons famously photographed the hotel and the glamorous crowd that gathered here, but it still feels relevant decades later.
Come for the iconic pool. Take the elevator down to the sea. Order lunch at Pelligrill. Cancel whatever else you thought you were going to do that afternoon.
The original Italian summer.
Make it a trip: Pair it with a few days in Rome or continue inland for a proper Tuscan road trip.
Villa La Coste
Provence, France
Some hotels give you a beautiful room. Villa La Coste gives you an entire world.
Set among vineyards in Provence, the property brings together wine, food, architecture and an extraordinary contemporary art collection. You can spend the morning wandering among works by artists and architects including Louise Bourgeois, Tadao Ando and Richard Serra, have a very long lunch, and somehow realize you haven’t actually left the property all day.
This is exactly the kind of hotel I love building a trip around because staying here feels like experiencing Provence rather than simply sleeping there.
Art, wine and Provence all within an exclusive retreat.
Make it a trip: Start in Paris and take the train south, or make it part of a longer Provence and Côte d’Azur itinerary.
La Residencia, A Belmond Hotel
Deià, Mallorca
There are places that are beautiful in photographs and then there are places that have a feeling about them. Deià is firmly in the second category.
La Residencia sits tucked into the Tramuntana Mountains among olive and citrus groves, with stone buildings, terraces, art and views that make it very easy to understand why artists have been drawn to this little corner of Mallorca for decades.
Spend the morning walking into the village. Have lunch that turns into the afternoon. Swim. Read. Take the hotel’s donkey trail through the olive groves. Make your way down to Cala Deià.
Mallorca can be many different trips. This is the version where you embrace slow travel.
A few slow days in Deià.
Make it a trip: Combine it with Palma and a few nights on the coast—or don’t. Staying put is kind of the point.
Il San Pietro di Positano
Positano, Italy
There are plenty of beautiful hotels on the Amalfi Coast. Il San Pietro is one of the few that feels almost impossible to separate from the destination itself.
Built into the cliffs just outside Positano, the hotel tumbles toward the Mediterranean through gardens and terraces until an elevator carved through the rock deposits you at the sea.
There’s a private beach club. A tennis court sitting improbably between the cliff and the water. Lunch at Carlino. And those views—the kind that make even someone who travels for a living stop talking for a second.
Positano can be busy. Il San Pietro feels like you’ve somehow found your own little piece of it.
The Amalfi Coast fantasy.
Make it a trip: Rome + Positano is hard to beat, but I’d also happily continue south to Sicily.
Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel Athens
Athens, Greece
I think Greece sometimes gets reduced to one image: whitewashed buildings hanging over the cliffs of Santorini.
This is a different Greece.
Four Seasons Astir Palace sits on a pine-covered peninsula in Vouliagmeni, about 30 minutes from central Athens, and feels like stepping into the glamorous Athenian Riviera.
There are beaches, waterfront bungalows, boats waiting at the jetty and long lunches overlooking the Aegean. You can spend the morning among the ruins of ancient Athens and be swimming in the sea that afternoon.
That combination is what makes this one particularly good.
Summer on the Athenian Riviera.
Make it a trip: A few nights here before heading out to the Greek islands.
Le Bristol Paris
Paris, France
Paris has no shortage of grand hotels. But there is something about Le Bristol.
Maybe it’s the courtyard garden. Maybe it’s the rooftop pool overlooking Paris. Maybe it’s Fa-Raon, the resident Burmese cat, casually roaming around one of the city’s great palace hotels.
Or maybe it’s simply that Le Bristol manages to feel wonderfully Parisian without ever feeling overly precious about it.
This is old-school European luxury—the kind where breakfast in bed feels completely reasonable and coming downstairs for a drink requires just enough effort to make getting dressed fun again.
There will always be a new hotel opening in Paris. I’d still happily come back here.
Paris done properly.
Make it a trip: Honestly? Paris is enough.
Badrutt’s Palace
St. Moritz, Switzerland
If Il Pellicano is my Italian summer fantasy, Badrutt’s Palace is its winter counterpart.
Sitting above Lake St. Moritz with the Alps rising behind it, this is European winter glamour in its most unapologetic form.
Ski in the morning. Have an unnecessarily fabulous lunch. Take a horse-drawn carriage across the snow. Come back for a swim overlooking the mountains and then get dressed for dinner.
St. Moritz has been doing winter this way for generations, and Badrutt’s Palace remains right at the center of it.
This isn’t the hotel for someone who simply wants to go skiing. It’s the hotel for someone who wants the entire St. Moritz experience.
Winter in St. Moritz.
Make it a trip: Arrive by train. The journey through Switzerland is part of the fun.
The Fife Arms
Braemar, Scotland
The Fife Arms is wonderfully weird. And I mean that as the highest compliment.
Set in the tiny village of Braemar in the Scottish Highlands, the hotel is packed with art, antiques, tartan, taxidermy, dramatic wallpaper and more than a few things you’ll find yourself stopping to inspect on the way back to your room.
It feels less like someone designed a luxury hotel and more like a wildly interesting person invited you to stay at their country house. Then you walk outside and remember you’re surrounded by the Cairngorms.
Hike. Fish. Drink whisky. Sit by the fire. Wear the Barbour jacket.
A hotel with more personality than most people you know.
Make it a trip: Edinburgh + the Highlands, preferably with a car and nowhere you need to be particularly quickly.
Ashford Castle
Cong, Ireland
And finally, sometimes you just want to stay in a castle.
Not a hotel that sort of looks like a castle. A proper, 800-year-old castle sitting on hundreds of acres beside a lake in the Irish countryside.
Ashford is grand, certainly, but what makes it worth traveling for is everything that happens once you’re there.
Go falconry. Ride horses. Take a boat onto Lough Corrib. Walk through the woods. Have afternoon tea. Come back to your room and wonder briefly whether you should start dressing like this all the time.
It’s wonderfully over-the-top in exactly the way a trip to Ireland occasionally should be.
The full Irish castle fantasy.
Make it a trip: Finish here after Dublin and a drive through the Irish countryside. Save the castle for last.
When the Hotel Becomes Part of the Trip
What I love most about this list is how little these hotels actually have in common.
One is a centuries-old Irish castle. Another is an art-filled retreat in Provence. One is where I want to spend an Italian summer in a swimsuit and another has me dreaming about winter coats and St. Moritz.
But they all do something I think the very best hotels do: they make where you’re staying part of the story of the trip.
And when you’re crossing an ocean, taking the time off, arranging the flights and finally going somewhere you’ve been dreaming about, I think that’s worth seeking out.
Yes, Italy is slightly overrepresented.
I design highly personal journeys throughout Europe, pairing exceptional hotels with the places, people and experiences that make a destination worth traveling for.
