Inspections
A few of the rooms I have slept in.
Every one of these is a hotel I have slept in, photographed myself and written up afterwards. They are a small part of the ground this site covers: there are many more places in the photographs on Independents than there are pieces about them, and these are the ones I have had the time to do properly. Five notes from each stay are public. The rest goes to the people who travel with me.
Munich, Germany
Rosewood Munich
The old Bavarian State Bank and the Palais Neuhaus-Preysing, joined and opened in 2023 as Rosewood's first house in Germany. The word TRESOR is still cut into the stone at the foot of the stairs, and nobody has tried to hide it.
Peloponnese, Greece
Dexamenes Seaside Hotel
A 1920s wine factory on the Ionian coast, its concrete tanks turned into rooms and almost nothing tidied away. I have been three times, always in the last weeks of the season.
Gargnano, Lake Garda, Italy
Lefay Resort and SPA Lago di Garda
A spa resort on a hillside above Gargnano, up a narrow road with almost nothing else on it. The outdoor pool is the photograph everyone knows. The rest of it surprised me more.
Dolomites, South Tyrol, Italy
FORESTIS
A mountain retreat where the setting shapes the entire stay.
Thessaloniki, Greece
ON Residence
A 1926 waterfront building on Leoforos Nikis, reopened in 2022 around the restaurant that used to be the centre of the city's social life. The initials are the restaurant's. I have been twice, once for a night in April and once for Christmas.
Milan, Italy
Park Hyatt Milano
A high-level hotel in the heart of Milan, two steps from the Galleria, and the best place to start a visit to the city in December.
Rome, Italy
Orient Express La Minerva
The old Hotel de la Minerve under a new name, with the Pantheon on one side of the roof and half of Rome on the other.
Livadia, Antiparos, Greece
The Rooster
Sixteen stone cottages up a valley above Livadia Bay, reached by a dirt road with one sign on it. The only house on this site I have been back to four summers.
Higashiyama, Kyoto, Japan
Park Hyatt Kyoto
A guesthouse on the hill above Higashiyama, and the only sane way to have that district to yourself.
Marrakech, Morocco
LA MAMOUNIA
Behind the walls of the medina, a hotel from 1923 and the gardens it was built around. I stayed in a Garden Deluxe, and that is where I would begin.
Madrid, Spain
Four Seasons Madrid
A building on Alcalá that comes to a point like a prow, and a pool under glass that most guests never find.
Doha, Qatar
The Ned Doha
The old Ministry of Interior on the Corniche, kept and reopened as ninety rooms, seven restaurants and a members' club. Doha has no shortage of glass towers. This one was already standing.
Baa Atoll, Maldives
Coco Palm Dhuni Kolhu
A Maldivian-owned island in Baa Atoll, ninety-eight thatched villas hidden under the trees it was built around. I have been back four times, which is the review.
Adelboden, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland
The Brecon
A Welsh family's house in Adelboden, adults only, where the champagne is yours to pour and no room has a television.
Hanoi, Vietnam
Capella Hanoi
Forty-seven rooms in the French Quarter, each one given to a performer of the 1920s, inside a building Bill Bensley filled to the ceiling. The loudest hotel I have stayed in, and one of the most precise.
Ashar Valley, AlUla, Saudi Arabia
Habitas AlUla
A camp of tented villas on the floor of a sandstone canyon in the north west of Saudi Arabia, where the rock does most of the work and the house has the sense to let it.
Kasbah, Marrakech, Morocco
La Sultana Marrakech
Four riads joined into one house inside the walls of the Kasbah, two minutes from the Saadian Tombs, where the day outside is loud and the day inside is not.
Huvadhoo Atoll, Maldives
Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa
An island with nothing on the horizon, fifty kilometres north of the equator.
Melides, Alentejo, Portugal
Vermelho
Christian Louboutin's house in an Alentejo village, thirteen rooms and no two of them alike, where the red in the name is a promise the building keeps.
Vouliagmeni, Athens Riviera, Greece
Four Seasons Astir Palace
A pine peninsula half an hour from the Acropolis, where the city stops and the sea begins.
San José del Cabo, Mexico
Viceroy Los Cabos
White blocks standing in black water on the Sea of Cortez, by Miguel Ángel Aragonés, with three kitchens in it that do three different jobs.
Venice, Italy
Palazzo Venart
Seventeen rooms in a restored private house in Santa Croce, with a lawn running down to its own gate on the Grand Canal and a two-star dining room that does breakfast. The address nobody walks past, which is most of the point.
Singapore
Andaz Singapore
A vertical hotel inside Ole Scheeren's honeycomb towers, with André Fu reading the shophouse alleys of Kampong Glam back into the rooms. Everything happens between the twenty-fifth floor and the thirty-ninth.
Robertson Quay, Singapore
The Warehouse Hotel
An 1895 godown on the Singapore River, thirty-seven rooms, with a lobby that still has its trusses and a bar under forty hanging pulley wheels. In a city that photographs itself from the fifty-seventh floor, this one is at water level.