Hotels

San Francisco, United States

Bees on the roof of an Embarcadero hotel make honey for the restaurant downstairs, and the same roof has stone tubs for a soak in Pacific sea salts.

South African Game Reserves, South Africa

Out with a guide at dawn and again at dusk into a malaria-free Big Five reserve on the Waterberg plateau, and in between an infinity pool looking out over the same bush.

Palm Springs, United States

A motel built new in 2016, rust-red metal folded along the roofline and a heated pool in the middle, with the bare brown San Jacinto Mountains standing behind.

Ibiza, Spain

Lengths of a 43-metre pool between the orange trees of an Ibiza farm, and a daybed in their shade to recover on.

Venice, Italy

Across the canal from St Mark's, the Zitelle took in Venice's girls without dowries; now it has a heated pool and a kids club open until nine at night.

Comporta, Portugal

A roof bar over the rice fields, and the beach a flat fifteen-minute walk away, at the one hotel in the middle of Comporta village.

Prague, Czechia

A 1932 hotel off Wenceslas Square, all green marble and brass, whose teletype sent the world the first news that Warsaw Pact troops were occupying Czechoslovakia.

Sri Lanka, south coast, Sri Lanka

Four-poster beds on original wooden floors inside the ramparts of Galle Fort, with one of the butlers to lead a walk round its old churches and warehouses.

Sri Lanka, south coast, Sri Lanka

Every suite has a six-metre plunge pool of its own, and for anyone who wants lengths there is a 47-metre one above an 800-metre crescent of sand on Sri Lanka's south coast.

Rhodes, Greece

Slatted timber cabanas, a daybed in each, line the pool at Ammades outside Faliraki, and beyond the lawn is the hotel's own beach, without a guest on it under sixteen.

Paros, Greece

On the quiet west coast of Paros, the Andronis family's whitewashed suites face a palm-lined pool by day and, from Olvo's terrace at dinner, a headland running out into the bay.

Rhodes, Greece

A five-bedroom villa at the water's edge in Pefkos, its stone-and-lime architecture built to read as part of the landscape, four kilometres from Lindos.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Twenty-two floors above Palm Jumeirah, a bridge between two towers carries a 90-metre infinity pool and a bar you can swim up to.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Sandstone buildings laid out like an Arabian fort beside a desert reserve where oryx live, and dinner under the open sky with a band and belly dancers.

Tenerife, Spain

A colonial village of pastel houses and red-tiled turrets stepped down through palm gardens to the sand at Costa Adeje, with a Michelin star waiting at Nub.

Ibiza, Spain

Twenty metres from an adults-only hotel's door on Ibiza's quiet north coast, the mojito man mixed ours on the sand of the cove and made them strong.

Prague, Czechia

A mustard-yellow sofa under a cluster of glass globes in the library, and a hot pool among alcoves of gold mosaic, five minutes' walk from Old Town Square.

Ibiza, Spain

An arched Ibizan villa looks down on a pool cut like a canal between two rows of cypresses, with water falling into it at the far end.

Venice, Italy

A chandelier of 14,000 pieces of Murano glass hangs like a set of sails in a hospice of 1272 on the Castello waterfront, across the water from San Giorgio Maggiore.

New Orleans, United States

Crowned skulls on the lounge wingbacks and THE BIG EASY in blue neon, in a brick hotel built among the converted warehouses, under half a mile from the French Quarter.

Ibiza, Spain

What was a campsite in the pines of the Benimussa hills is now fifteen rooms in whitewashed bungalows, with shade enough in the garden to read straight through a July midday.

Lake Garda, Italy

Fifty-five suites turned to face Lake Garda from a hillside above its eastern shore, where 97 olive trees were dug up to make room for them and then put back.

Rhodes, Greece

White blocks under a bare limestone hill on the east coast of Rhodes, where every veranda gives onto a pool, shared or private, and even dinner has a resident DJ.

Florence, Italy

Frescoed suites and an onyx honesty bar in the Florence palazzo where Ginori had its porcelain headquarters and Pinocchio's author made his home.

Algarve, Portugal

A nineteenth-century estate house in old-town Lagos that still keeps a vegetable garden and two hundred chickens, with cocktails in a courtyard ringed by birds of paradise.

Tulum, Mexico

Pablo Escobar's old beach house in Tulum, now hung with a New York gallerist's KAWS and Keith Haring, and with a swimming pool in a cavern underground.

Lake Como, Italy

An abandoned vicarage above Cremia, now thirteen rooms, where digging the infinity pool turned up a Roman house and graves from about 2000 BC.

Denver, United States

Studios with a full kitchen and a drop-down screen six feet by eight for a film after dinner, among the warehouse murals of Denver's RiNo arts district.

Seville, Spain

The first smart hotel to cross the Guadalquivir to Triana, in a brick-and-iron corner house of 1924 with a pool up on the roof.

Rome, Italy

Tacos among the cacti on a roof above Regola, looking out over the domes of Rome, with street art in the lobby of the 19th-century building below.

Chicago, United States

An 1893 gentlemen's club on Michigan Avenue, converted in 2015 with its staircases and billiard rooms intact, and a rooftop bar facing Millennium Park.

Denver, United States

A Cherry Creek hotel where the destination fee, for once, is worth paying: it lets you into a private members' club, heated rooftop pool and all.

Barbados, Barbados

A pink house trimmed in white like icing, built for weekends on the west coast of Barbados in the 1940s, whose boat takes guests out to swim with hawksbill turtles every day, free.

Florence, Italy

The classrooms of an 1868 boarding school on the hill above Florence are suites now, some with a wine cellar of their own, and the pool looks across at the Duomo.

Barbados, Barbados

Turtles in the aquamarine water off the beach, and behind it a 1930 seaside house that became Barbados' first residential club.

Barbados, Barbados

Cottages and coral-stone buildings in twelve acres of garden on Barbados' calm west coast, running down to a beach where the sailing and the paddleboards are included.

Rome, Italy

Two small pools in the old bank vaults, and upstairs a suite under the painted ceiling where the Bank of Italy's board once met, ten minutes' walk from the Pantheon.

Seville, Spain

At the top of a seventeenth-century casa palacio in old Seville, two duplex suites each have a plunge pool of their own among potted olive trees.

Paros, Greece

Daybeds out on pale platforms in the infinity pool, and below them a cove of fine sand and shallow water, ten minutes' walk from Naoussa's harbour.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

The Green Lady herself, Tretchikoff's original, hangs at a diamond jeweller's wine estate on the Helshoogte Pass, where each lodge keeps a heated pool of its own.

Corfu, Greece

Waterfront Pavilions with a pool or a jacuzzi on the deck and the Ionian beyond it, at a modernist beach hotel built for the Onassis family south of Corfu Town.

Corfu, Greece

Glyfada's former Grand Hotel, where the grown-ups get a pool beside the spa and the children get a bucket that fills and tips over whoever is standing beneath it.

Lake Garda, Italy

Seven hectares of holm oak and stone pine on the northern shore of Lake Garda, with the mountains coming down into the water and Riva del Garda a walk away along the lakefront.

Lake Garda, Italy

Curved white walls fan out like a swan's wing at the door of an adults-only hotel in Limone, and its infinity pool, heated to 32°C, looks down the length of Lake Garda.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

A 1906 seaside mansion above Bantry Bay, hung with two centuries of South African art, where thousands of bottles of wine spiral up a corkscrew.

Zakynthos, Greece

A stone villa with its own pool and someone else to do the cleaning, five minutes' walk up the hill from the little harbour at Agios Nikolaos.

Miami Beach, United States

On Española Way, the 1925 buildings where Al Capone is said to have run card games now hide a ten-seat sushi counter behind an unmarked door.

Rome, Italy

Stone pines and palms round a pool hung on the roof of a former bank off Via Veneto, with the dome of St Peter's for a backdrop.

Miami Beach, United States

A 1948 Miami Beach hotel redone in gold leaf and red velvet, where a butler by the pool will clean your sunglasses between swims.

Florence, Italy

Four and a half hectares of private park behind a palazzo built for the Florentine Republic's chancellor in the 1470s, and a 28-metre pool out in the garden.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

Dark-gabled villas in the forest above Hout Bay, where the plunge pool is filled with spring water off Table Mountain.

Sri Lanka, south coast, Sri Lanka

Five arracks to taste on the colonnaded verandah of a 300-year-old Dutch mansion inside Galle Fort, with frangipani over the pool in the courtyard behind.

Park City, United States

Hand-painted Austrian wedding cabinets, made for a bride's trousseau, have ended up in a Deer Valley ski inn a few steps from the chairlifts.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

Pink pipework and raw concrete in two heritage buildings on St George's Mall, and on the roof a glass-sided pool beside a bar the neighbourhood comes up to.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Hundred-year-old punts hang on the lobby wall of this hotel on the Cam, and upstairs the bed ends are made to look like them.

Tenerife, Spain

Agatha Christie stayed in 1927; fifty years after it shut, Spain's first grand luxury hotel is open again on its hill above Puerto de la Cruz, between the Atlantic and Teide.

Lake Garda, Italy

Loungers under a weeping willow at the water's edge, and dinner beneath century-old magnolias, in the Habsburgs' old hunting lodge at Gardone Riviera.

Prague, Czechia

Breakfast in a late-baroque café a floor above Prague's Old Town Square, with the Astronomical Clock across the cobbles from the table.

Lake Como, Italy

Gualtiero Marchesi's gold-leaf risotto on a terrace facing Bellagio, and below it a swimming pool moored out on Lake Como itself.

Ibiza, Spain

A white hotel clinging to a north-coast cliff, with a bath at the bedroom window and only the Mediterranean beyond it.

Denver, United States

A rooftop pool over Cherry Creek, bikes lent for nothing and a record player in the room, with a library of records to choose from.

Ios, Greece

White cubes and stone terraces stepped into the hillside above Mylopotas, each suite with a pool of its own and breakfast carried out to the edge of it.

Seville, Spain

Breakfast under the tiled arches of the courtyard that played Cairo in Lawrence of Arabia, at the grand hotel Seville built for its 1929 exposition.

Seville, Spain

A Seville manor house where Scandinavian furniture sits under the old beams, and the plunge pool on the roof comes into its own at aperitif time on a sunny winter's day.

New Orleans, United States

Five storeys of pink arched galleries over St Charles Avenue and its streetcar, and Flour Moon bagels for breakfast.

Hvar, Croatia

A 1929 villa where state officials once summered, its garden of palm and pine stepping down Hvar Town's seafront to two heated pools, one above the other.

Lake Garda, Italy

Spring water from about 2,000 metres down fills the thermal pool at this adults-only hotel on the Sirmione peninsula, and the best suites come with a place on the pier.

New Orleans, United States

An old Marigny convent where every canopy bed has a small cross on each post, and the jazz on Frenchmen Street is five minutes' walk away.

Hvar, Croatia

A bay of its own on Hvar, with sunbeds under centuries-old pines on a private rocky shore and the harbour twenty minutes' walk away along the water.

Ibiza, Spain

A nineteenth-century windmill by the pool, now a shower and a treatment room, on a citrus estate five minutes' drive from the restaurants of Ibiza Town.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

A suite with two roll-top baths side by side and a television turned to face them, in a listed building across Trumpington Street from the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Corfu, Greece

An all-inclusive on 600 metres of Corfu sand, with a bungalow option that buys you a private pool and, if you are travelling with a baby, your evenings back.

Lake Como, Italy

Patricia Urquiola's timber-slatted hotel at Torno keeps a fleet of boats hand-built for it by a Lake Como family that has been making them since 1771.

Comporta, Portugal

Whitewashed houses under terracotta roofs, set out like a village in 12 hectares of pine outside Comporta, with a saltwater pool where the square would be.

Ios, Greece

Twelve suites on the cliff above Mylopotas bay, each with its own pool and nobody else in it, and yachts at anchor in the water below.

Santorini, Greece

Twelve suites on the black volcanic sand of Perivolos, many with a hot tub on the terrace, on the side of Santorini that gets the sunrise and leaves the sunset to the caldera.

Kalkan, Türkiye

Three stone houses on the brow above Kalkan's horseshoe bay, and a roof where dinner is laid under woven shades with the bay beyond the rail.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

Eight rooms on the Higgovale slopes under Table Mountain, and a small pool for an hour with a book before the rest of the day goes to Cape Town.

Bozeman and Yellowstone, United States

Whiskey and live bands in the basement where the National Guard's band once practised, and on the roof of the new tower, a saltwater pool heated all winter.

South African Game Reserves, South Africa

Twenty-four suites in the carriages of a train parked for good on a 1910 bridge over the Sabie, with hippo and elephant passing under the pool.

Kalkan, Türkiye

Thatched parasols on timber platforms over the rocks of Kalamar Bay, below a hillside hotel where every room takes a pet.

South African Game Reserves, South Africa

Three of the six suites on Kwandwe's hills come with a safari vehicle and a guide of their own, so a family can go out after rhino at whatever hour the children wake.

Rhodes, Greece

Six suites in a Rhodes knight's house of 1340, just inside St John's Gate, one of them with a plunge pool in a walled garden of its own.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

The estate's own rosé by a rim-flow pool that looks over the lakes, on a working wine farm below the Simonsberg outside Stellenbosch.

Marrakech, Morocco

Eight walled hectares of orange trees and roses inside the Medina, given to a prince as a wedding present, and a palace in them where Churchill came to paint.

Florence, Italy

Six apartments in a fifteenth-century Oltrarno palazzo, where the one-bedroom outsizes a two-bedroom and every apartment keeps its own wine cellar.

Palm Springs, United States

Spanish-style cottages of 1933 in downtown Palm Springs, once facing demolition and now with a clawfoot bath out on the patio, beside the fire.

Marrakech, Morocco

A spa of pink marble columns round a long sunken pool, and on the roof 2,000 square metres of terrace looking down into the Saadian Tombs next door.

Ibiza, Spain

In Ibiza's walled old town, a Jesuit convent's chapel is now a swimming pool under olive trees, and the building pirates once frequented serves dinner over the port.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

Under the thatch of a white Cape Dutch hotel in Franschhoek, some bedrooms have no ceiling but the roof, and the mountains fill the balcony doors.

Lake Garda, Italy

Swimming lanes are tiled along the edge of an infinity pool above Gargnano, so every length runs beside Lake Garda and none of them towards a wall.

Zakynthos, Greece

Grass grows on the roofs of the stone suites at Lesante Cape, a new village on a Zakynthos hillside with a chapel and a folklore museum on its square.

Ios, Greece

Brilliant cocktails from a bar at the edge of an infinity pool, and below it scattered white houses running down the hill to Mylopotas bay.

Lake Garda, Italy

Top-floor suites over Lake Garda in the Riva del Garda hotel of 1899 that once put up Gabriele D'Annunzio and a king.

Kalkan, Türkiye

A private cabana on the waterfront below the hotel, drinks brought down to it, and Kalkan's town centre under ten minutes away on foot.

Moab, United States

Two- and three-bedroom casitas on the red rock above Moab, each with a hot tub on its deck, and a private chef to send for when nobody wants to cook.

Ios, Greece

A hillside hotel between Ios's harbour and Chora, whose restaurant is called Grandma's and keeps winning awards for modern Greek cooking.

Barbados, Barbados

Ten rooms under apricot arches above Enterprise Beach, and on the roof a pool beside Café Luna, once Barbados' Restaurant of the Year.

Barbados, Barbados

Suites in what is left of Fort Rupert on Barbados' north coast, and candlelit tables at the water's edge beside it, where the hotel's Fish Pot serves grilled lobster.

South African Game Reserves, South Africa

Five camps on a bend of the Sand River, with trackers who have studied the reserve's leopards for decades and a studio that will rent you the camera.

South African Game Reserves, South Africa

Verandas tiled like a chessboard look over a waterhole and the Eastern Cape plains from Long Lee Manor, a homestead of 1910 on the Shamwari reserve.

South African Game Reserves, South Africa

On a malaria-free reserve where the Kalahari meets the bushveld, every suite has a plunge pool of its own for the hours between the dawn drive and the dusk one.

Marrakech, Morocco

A house of eight rooms behind a fluted pink wall, across the street from the Majorelle Garden, where the garden rooms keep their baths outside among the cacti.

Algarve, Portugal

A pool deck just above the sand of Martinhal beach, with a crèche from six months and clubs for children up to seventeen.

Hvar, Croatia

Two hectares of pine forest on Hvar's Maslinica Bay, with an infinity pool looking out across the water, and close enough to the Stari Grad ferry to walk in off the boat.

Lisbon, Portugal

A nineteenth-century shoe-polish factory in the lanes of Alfama, with a red-tiled pool on the roof meant to disappear into the terracotta that falls away below it to the Tagus.

Seville, Spain

Eleven rooms round the glass-roofed marble patio of an 1880 mansion in El Arenal, and on the roof a pool kept for whoever is sleeping downstairs.

South African Game Reserves, South Africa

Wild elephants come to drink at the saltwater pool of this thatched Waterberg lodge, and its spa deck looks out over their waterhole.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

A Cape Town grande dame painted pink for peace in 1918, with nine acres of garden under Table Mountain and a free club for children at weekends.

Corfu, Greece

An early-twentieth-century Corfiot village built in 2018 from details of Corfu's Old Town, with a pebbled beach of its own at the foot of the hill.

Tulum, Mexico

Grey daybeds under the palms at the quiet southern end of Tulum's hotel zone, close enough to the Sian Ka'an reserve to walk to its edge.

Ibiza, Spain

Two pools above Cala Gracio: the big one, among the largest on Ibiza, has the DJ and no children, and the other has the children and the bean bags.

Zakynthos, Greece

A 4,000-square-metre pool curls round an island of centuries-old olive trees on the hill above Tsilivi, with the Ionian beyond its far edge.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

A Michelin-starred dinner 100 metres above Dubai, on the stretch of glass bridge that has run out past the end of its tower and kept going.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Domes and towers in 65 acres of gardens beside Dubai Marina, running down to a kilometre of private sand on the Gulf.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Andalusian courtyards and 450 metres of private sand at the far end of Palm Jumeirah, with the towers of Dubai Marina kept across the water at a polite distance.

Venice, Italy

A palazzo of 1436 on two Cannaregio canals, taking hotel guests for the first time, with a fresco of 1790 over the corner suite where the canals meet.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

The entrance to this Camps Bay hotel is screened with scaffold planks recycled from its building site, and the lap pool, cocktail bar alongside, looks straight down to the sand.

Lake Como, Italy

In the Galli family's 15th-century palazzo inside Como's medieval walls, one bath stands in the bedroom, on terrazzo, under a painted ceiling.

Rome, Italy

A Michelin-starred dinner on the roof with the Colosseum across the road, and a gym that looks down on the ruins of Rome's largest gladiator school.

Florence, Italy

The palazzo that was home to Dante's Beatrice, with eighteenth-century frescoes over the suites and, down in the vaults, a pool kept at 34°C.

Venice, Italy

A garden of Roman sculpture runs down to a pier of its own on the Grand Canal, in front of the palazzo where Glam holds the only two Michelin stars in Venice.

Algarve, Portugal

An 18th-century Tavira palace with two plunge pools on its roof, above the terracotta and the church domes, and in its Moorish-inspired wing a bronze shower under the open sky.

Tulum, Mexico

Round thatched casitas in the jungle behind Tulum's white sand, and a beach club that turns into a dancefloor for international DJs on Saturday nights.

Ibiza, Spain

Mid-century Miami redone in pink on Ibiza's San Antonio Bay, from the round bar on the pool deck to the Smeg fridge in every suite.

Paros, Greece

At Parocks every room has a pool or an open-air jacuzzi of its own, on a cliff above Ambelas with the mountains of Naxos laid out across the strait.

Lake Como, Italy

An indoor pool carved out of an underground tunnel, and two vintage Rivas at the jetty below the gardens of an 18th-century villa on Lake Como.

Chicago, United States

Black and white marble stripes in the lobby, and gold leaf on the crown of a 1929 Art Deco tower that was drawn, the story goes, as a bottle of champagne.

Park City, United States

A heated pool on the roof with the snow of the Wasatch peaks behind it, and from the front door a 310-metre walk to the Red Pine gondola.

Santorini, Greece

Fishermen's caves in the cliff at Oia, whitewashed into suites over the caldera, and an infinity pool that has been on magazine covers since 1997.

Ibiza, Spain

A long pool on a terrace of pink crazy paving, facing Es Vedrà across the water, and a rooftop bar for watching the sun set over the rock.

Algarve, Portugal

A pink Rococo palace inland from Faro, cherubs floating across the salon ceiling between gilt chandeliers, and the bedrooms in a pale stone wing next door, each with a balcony.

Algarve, Portugal

Loungers set in the shallows of an infinity pool on a plateau in the Vicentine coast natural park, looking down a valley to a strip of Atlantic.

Lake Garda, Italy

Pastel walls and a red clawfoot bath under the beams of a farmhouse of about 1500, in olive groves that run down towards Bardolino and Lake Garda.

Rome, Italy

Five rooms in a 16th-century building on the ruins of Domitian's stadium, just off Piazza Navona, with breakfast brought to the room each morning.

Hvar, Croatia

A stone villa of 1914 on Hvar's harbour front, its terrace sofas set out on the promenade where the superyachts tie up.

Tenerife, Spain

A heated pool out on the terrace of a two-bedroom suite, the Atlantic beyond it, on Tenerife's black-sand south coast, four hours from a London winter.

Marrakech, Morocco

Fifty-three riads, each with a plunge pool and a roof terrace, inside the walls of a five-hectare estate whose staff come and go by tunnel.

San Francisco, United States

Kelly Wearstler has hung Cubist canvases under the Corinthian capitals of a 1904 Market Street flatiron, and set striped armchairs round fire pits on its roof.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

A white timber beach house of seven rooms just above Camps Bay, where the small bar mixes a cocktail the way a very sophisticated friend would at home.

South African Game Reserves, South Africa

Six suites on a Sabi Sand riverbed, each with a plunge pool that the elephants passing through camp drink from as if it were theirs.

Santorini, Greece

Eight adults-only rooms in whitewash and green shutters, facing the caldera, for the one night Santorini gets between the plane and the ferry.

South African Game Reserves, South Africa

Glass-walled suites hung off the rock above the N'wanetsi River in Kruger, each with a daybed under netting out on its deck for sleeping outside.

Prague, Czechia

In the corner rooms a cushioned window nook looks over the Vltava to the Dancing House, and the walls are hung with hand-painted Cubist art.

Ibiza, Spain

Andalusian and Moorish dinners under century-old olive trees on Xarraca Bay, made with produce from a 400-year-old farm the hotel keeps in the middle of Ibiza.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

A beach resort on the crescent of Palm Jumeirah, with a slide-fitted family pool and balconies looking straight across the lagoon to Dubai Marina.

Chicago, United States

Giant chandeliers hang against the bare brick of a 1907 Fulton Market leather works, and the bigger bedrooms are done in velvet and veneer.

Palm Springs, United States

In 1952 an MGM actor built a red barn in Palm Springs; now it serves dinner at one long table under the beams, and some of the baths are horse troughs.

Comporta, Portugal

In 170 hectares of pine forest near Comporta, a two-bedroom villa gets a hectare to itself and the four-bedroom gets two.

Park City, United States

A stone and timber lodge halfway up Deer Valley, named for Norway's giant slalom champion of 1952, with the Olympic rings tiled into the floor of a heated pool.

Comporta, Portugal

Cabins on stilts over an untreated natural pool in the umbrella pines outside Comporta, with a ladder from each deck straight down into the water.

Lisbon, Portugal

A 20th-century Amoreiras townhouse that kept its curving white stair and then poured colour into fifteen rooms, no two of them alike.

Sri Lanka, south coast, Sri Lanka

Lawns run from a white colonial house to an almost deserted beach on Mawella Bay, and dinner was the best Sri Lankan cooking we have eaten.

New York, United States

A Bowery tower built in 2004 and dressed for an older New York, with a Gothic stone fireplace in the lobby and the music left off on purpose.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

A white-gabled manor of 1906 in nine acres of Constantia garden, where the camphor trees were planted in 1773 and are now officially champions.

Denver, United States

Rooms upstairs in Denver's 1914 railway station, where the old ticket office is now the bar.

Chicago, United States

Stephanie Izard's ceviche and a pool share a roof above the old meatpacking streets of Fulton Market.

Florence, Italy

A 16th-century palazzo welded to a postmodern block by Andrea Branzi, far enough north of the Duomo that you get to come home from Florence each evening.

New York, United States

Brick salvaged from the works that built New York's wooden water towers, and on the roof a charcoal grill turning out kebabs with the Manhattan skyline across the river.

Bozeman and Yellowstone, United States

A 1963 motel on Bozeman's Main Street with local art in every room and a wood fire by the lobby, 78 miles from Yellowstone's north entrance.

Sri Lanka, south coast, Sri Lanka

The last house Geoffrey Bawa designed, five bedrooms in a yellow horseshoe round a courtyard pool, with the Indian Ocean on one side and a lagoon on the other.

Barbados, Barbados

A 1940s garage on Barbados' west coast that now serves dinner on a deck over the sand, with penthouses named Cadillac and Lincoln for its first trade.

Corfu, Greece

On Corfu's south coast an 18th-century olive mill keeps its cogs and levers and pours wine among them, with 120 suites in the grove around it, most with a pool of their own.

Sri Lanka, south coast, Sri Lanka

Cocktails by a pool at the edge of the Indian Ocean, then sunrise yoga on a platform by the sea to make amends, at a hotel named after Edward Lear's owl and pussy-cat.

Zakynthos, Greece

Sailing dinghies go out from a shack on the rocky shore of northern Zakynthos, and a water taxi runs along the coast to lunch at a seafront taverna.

Florence, Italy

A townhouse on Piazza Santa Maria Novella that serves dinner on Ginori porcelain, and keeps an alcove on its roof looking past Brunelleschi's dome to the hills.

Denver, United States

The idea came from a 17th-century Paris salon; the cocktails come from Death & Co, poured beneath arched mirrors and crystal chandeliers in a RiNo lobby.

Chicago, United States

A wedge of 1929 Art Deco at Wicker Park's six-way junction, built as offices for doctors and lawyers, with cocktails and the skyline on the 13th floor.

Miami Beach, United States

Lengths in a 75°F pool, then over to the 90°F one, in an avenue of palms behind a 1937 Art Deco hotel on Miami Beach's Collins Avenue.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

A hot tub over the Cam for watching other people punt, and upstairs Cambridge's only rooftop bar, with colleges in every direction.

Lisbon, Portugal

Velvet, brass and brick-red walls in the spa, and from the bar on the roof, São Jorge Castle across the terracotta rooftops of Lisbon.

Seville, Spain

A tiled fountain on the top-floor terrace and the Church of Santa Ana across the roofs, in a seven-room Triana house that gives each room a different Andalusia.

Moab, United States

Canvas suite tents with wood-burning stoves on the desert south of Moab, and Looking Glass Arch three minutes' walk from the door.

Moab, United States

Canvas tents on a red-rock plateau between Arches and Canyonlands, with a barbecue under the stars and a bed better than any tent has a right to.

Bozeman and Yellowstone, United States

Canvas safari tents ten minutes from Yellowstone's West Entrance, with a wood burner inside for nights cold enough to see your breath, even in June.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Carpets patterned after college ties and shelves stocked by Heywood Hill of Mayfair, in a coaching inn of 1834 facing the common where football got its rules.

Algarve, Portugal

A whitewashed hill village north of Loulé, built all at once, with a tower over the pool terrace where the church bell ought to be and a golf course in the valley below.

Algarve, Portugal

Dinner under the arches of a two-Michelin-star restaurant, with an Algarve garden running down to the sand of Praia da Galé and only thirteen rooms to share it.

Florence, Italy

The villa a baron built for his young bride and then planned to burn down, with a heated pool among more than a hundred kinds of rose beside the Boboli Gardens.

Lake Garda, Italy

Fish and meat grilled over an open fire on the hotel's own 500-square-metre jetty, below a columned villa among the cypresses of Sirmione.

Kalkan, Türkiye

Each room and suite at Villa Mahal has its own wooden deck on the rocks of Kalkan Bay, and the spa gives its massages in a stone cave that echoes with the waves.

Zakynthos, Greece

A three-bedroom villa in the hills of northern Zakynthos, with a swing chair under a pergola of rough timber and an 18-metre infinity pool pointed at the sunrise.

Bozeman and Yellowstone, United States

A Bozeman roadside inn turned Western lodge, which kept the white bear in the lobby and added a cedar sauna for after the mountains.

Park City, United States

Park City's schoolhouse of 1889 came through the Great Fire and the veterans' dances, and now keeps twelve rooms about a hundred steps from the Town Lift.

Cape Town and the Winelands, South Africa

Table Mountain framed in an arched sash, and port poured at five, in two Victorian Cape Town houses joined by a leafy courtyard and its plunge pool.

New York, United States

Manhattan's skyline fills the loft windows of a Williamsburg barrel works of 1901, and six floors up a bar pours New York spirits with the same view.