Art Hotels

London, United Kingdom

Blakes Hotel occupies a run of Victorian terrace houses in South Kensington, joined behind their brick fronts into a single hotel. From the street the row still reads as houses, with railings, steps and a dark painted entrance. The interiors were designed by Anouska Hempel and are unusually dark and layered for a London hotel.

Rooms differ from one another, each dressed with its own textiles, screens and collected furniture rather than to a house pattern. The shared rooms are small: a restaurant below street level, a bar and a sitting room. A courtyard at the back is the only outdoor part of the building.

Because the houses were built separately and later joined, floor levels and stairs vary and lift access does not reach everywhere. Ask the hotel about steps, about room sizes and about which rooms face the street before settling on one.

Category Art Hotels · Location London, United Kingdom · Checked September 2026

Pienza, Italy

La Bandita Townhouse stands on the main street of Pienza, a small Tuscan hill town laid out in the fifteenth century. The building served a religious community before it became a hotel, and its plan still follows the long corridors and plain cells of that earlier use, behind a plain stone front on the corso that gives very little away.

Rooms are pared back, with white walls, timber and iron fittings and few furnishings, so the old proportions stay visible. A restaurant and bar hold the ground floor and open to the street, and a walled garden sits behind. The shared rooms are used by people from the town as well as guests.

Ask the hotel about restaurant hours, which move with the season, and about parking, since vehicles are restricted inside the walls of the old town. Rooms facing the corso and rooms facing the garden differ in quiet, so name which you would prefer.

Category Art Hotels · Location Pienza, Italy · Checked September 2026

Lisbon, Portugal

Palacete Chafariz d'El Rei is a late nineteenth-century mansion at the foot of Alfama in Lisbon, beside the old public fountain that gives the street its name. Built for a merchant who had made his money in Brazil, it kept its coloured glass, tiled walls and carved wood through later uses and now holds a small number of suites.

The main floors keep their original rooms: a hall with worked glass, salons with painted ceilings and tiled panels, and a stair running the height of the house. Suites are set within those rooms rather than cut across them. A terrace above looks over the river and the roofs of the quarter.

The house stands on a slope, and the lanes of Alfama are steep and stepped, so ask about arriving with luggage and about vehicle access. Suite layouts differ a great deal from one another; it is worth asking which of them face the river.

Category Art Hotels · Location Lisbon, Portugal · Checked September 2026

Stepantsminda, Georgia

Rooms Hotel Kazbegi sits above Stepantsminda in the high Caucasus of northern Georgia. The building was a Soviet-era rest house, a long concrete block laid across the slope, and it was stripped back and rebuilt as a hotel while keeping its length and its unbroken rows of windows turned towards the valley, which fills the view from almost every room.

A timber-lined lounge runs the width of the building, with a fireplace, a bar and a restaurant opening from it and a terrace beyond. Guest rooms are plain, in timber, dark metal and glass, each facing outward. An indoor pool occupies the lower floor, cut into the slope, and a garden runs along the front of the building.

The road up from Tbilisi crosses a high pass and can close in winter weather, so ask the hotel about conditions before setting out. Restaurant and pool hours change with the season, and the valley-facing rooms are spoken for well ahead.

Category Art Hotels · Location Stepantsminda, Georgia · Checked September 2026

Pucón, Chile

Hotel Antumalal stands on a wooded slope above Lake Villarrica, outside Pucón in southern Chile. It was built in the middle of the last century in a modern idiom of low horizontal lines, stone, glass and timber, set into the ground so that the roof follows the fall of the hillside down towards the water.

Guest rooms are lined in native timber and each opens to the lake through a long window. The shared rooms include a sitting room with a stone fireplace and a dining room on the same level. Terraced gardens step down the slope through native planting to the shore below the house.

Ask the hotel about dining arrangements, which are limited to the house restaurant, and about the garden terraces, which are steep in places. Weather over the lake turns quickly, and nothing written here should be read as a promise of a clear view.

Category Art Hotels · Location Pucón, Chile · Checked September 2026

Monterrey, Mexico

Habita Monterrey stands in San Pedro Garza García, the district west of central Monterrey, with the Sierra Madre ridge rising behind it. It belongs to a small Mexican group of city hotels, and these notes describe this building alone. The street front is a plain slab, and most of the building's shared life happens on its roof.

The roof carries a pool, a bar and open terraces, with the ridge on one side and the city on the other. Guest rooms below are spare, in concrete, dark timber and full-height glazing. A restaurant and a lounge hold the ground floor and open to the street through a screened front.

The roof is given over to private functions at times and can be closed to guests, so ask before arriving. It is also worth confirming restaurant and bar hours, which differ between weekdays and weekends, and how vehicles reach the entrance.

Category Art Hotels · Location Monterrey, Mexico · Checked September 2026