Best Hotels

A pine-scented Italian mountain refuge beneath Monte Bianco where folklore, food, skiing, and serious pleasure converge, and where leaving feels faintly disloyal

Courmayeur sits at the foot of Mont Blanc with the quiet confidence of a place that knows exactly who it is. It has no need to shout. Unlike many Alpine resorts engineered for throughput and spectacle, this is a real town with a proper centre, cobbled streets, stone houses, and a rhythm dictated as much by weather and tradition as by ski lifts and restaurant bookings.

They do it so well. The Italians that is. Such imagination and such refinement in best utilising their impossible precipices and improbable shapes and angles.

For I had come to Lake Iseo, an hour from Milan’s Linate airport and called Sebino from the Latin for ‘double-hooked’ and divided between Bergamo and Brescia. It’s wonderfully punctuated with a dozen towns, some medieval.

The Thurlestone Hotel boasts a rich and fascinating history, one that elegantly interweaves a celebrated local dynasty, the Grose family, with the golden age of the British seaside holiday. 

Bovey Castle boasts a rich and fascinating history, one that elegantly interweaves a celebrated British retail dynasty, W.H. Smith, with the golden age of railway travel and vital service during two World Wars. Originally conceived as a private country bolthole, it has blossomed into one of the UK's most prominent luxury hotels.

Luxury takes many forms, yet Villa Nai 3.3 reshapes the very idea of indulgence until it feels impossibly richer, deeper, and more intoxicating than you imagined. Perched on the edge of Dugi Otok like a superbly hidden hobbit house of luxury, tucked into the hills with secret terraces, sun-drenched stone, and olive groves that seem to whisper ancient secrets, it offers a view so arresting even the most discerning Middle-earth residents might consider relocating.

Our visit to Eccleston Square Hotel formed part of International Excellence Magazine’s BMW Z4 M40i Grand Christmas Tour of London, which is an excellent excuse to indulge in refined hotel comforts while sweeping through the city’s most elegant neighbourhoods in a machine that encourages irresponsible levels of enthusiasm.

Ferrari Roma Spider: Arrival in a Medieval Dream

Where Alpine Peaks Meet the Art of Wellness

Some hotels offer you a bed. Others offer you a view. The 5-star Cyprianerhof Dolomites Hotel offers a philosophy. Its daily rhythm is seductively simple: climb mountains like an Olympian in the morning, surrender to spa decadence in the afternoon, then dine like a Renaissance prince by evening. In short: sweat, steam, feast, repeat.

Moseralm Hotel Welcome: Fairy Tales, Franciacorta Bubbles, and the Finest Pine

“A chalet straight out of ‘The Sound Of Music’.”

The Dolomites are a fantasy rendered in limestone and snow, rising like the set of a couture film directed by angels with impeccable taste. Peaks jagged yet graceful, valleys cascading with wildflowers or winter’s pristine white, and somewhere amidst this Alpine perfection sits the Moseralm Hotel, a Tyrolean chalet that feels as though it has been plucked straight from a storybook.

Flying directly into the tiny airport of Bolzano from Gatwick with SkyAlps makes the journey into South Tyrol unusually simple. Within half an hour of landing you are driving through the Val d’Ega, its meadows and forests framed by the jagged peaks of the Rosengarten and Latemar. Nestled in this landscape is Engel Ayurpura, the first dedicated Ayurveda hotel in the Dolomites and one of only two in Italy.