Art Hotels

Bagnols began as a fortified house in the thirteenth century, and the moat, drawbridge footings and round corner towers are still the first things a visitor registers on the approach. The conversion to a hotel kept the medieval plan intact rather than flattening it, so corridors bend where the old walls bent and rooms differ wildly in shape and ceiling height.

Its best-known feature is the painted decoration. Several rooms retain wall paintings and painted beams uncovered during restoration, and the great hall keeps an enormous Gothic fireplace. Furnishing throughout leans on antique pieces and heavy textiles rather than contemporary design, which suits the stone.

Outside, formal terraced gardens step down toward vineyards, and the property sits among the villages of the southern Beaujolais. Meals lean regional; the wine list, unsurprisingly, treats the surrounding appellations as home ground.

Cimbrone is a cliff-top villa on the Amalfi Coast, rebuilt in the early twentieth century by an English owner who layered romantic follies, cloisters and statuary onto a much older estate. The result is deliberately theatrical, and the gardens are the reason most people know the name.

The Terrace of Infinity runs along the outer edge, lined with marble busts and dropping straight to the sea below. Guests staying at the hotel have the gardens outside conventional visiting hours, which changes the place entirely — early morning and late evening are quiet in a way the daytime never is.

Guest rooms occupy the villa itself and are individually arranged, with frescoed ceilings and tiled floors in the older parts. Ravello's town square is a short walk uphill, along a lane closed to cars.

Tucked off the Champs-Élysées on a quiet side street in the 8th arrondissement, Hôtel de Berri is unusual in central Paris for having a real garden — a walled plot of mature planting that the building wraps around.

The interiors are consciously collected rather than coordinated: period furniture, contemporary pieces, patterned fabrics and a substantial amount of art hung densely through public rooms and corridors. It reads more like a decorated private residence than a hotel lobby, which is clearly the intention.

Rooms and suites run a wide size range, several with terraces facing the garden. The location puts the Arc de Triomphe, the avenue Montaigne shops and the Grand Palais all within a short walk.