Art Hotels

Paris, France

Le Roch stands on rue Saint-Roch in the first arrondissement, a narrow street a few minutes on foot from the Tuileries garden and the rue de Rivoli arcades. The house keeps the proportions of its street: a plain stone front, tall shuttered windows and a single door, with the width of a Parisian party wall on either side.

Interiors were designed as one commissioned scheme rather than assembled from stock, and the same hand runs through the ground floor rooms, the stair and the bedrooms. A fireplace lounge and a bar sit at entrance level, and a small spa with a pool is set below ground, which is the usual way of finding space on a site of this size.

Because the ground floor rooms are small, it helps to ask in advance when the lounge and bar are open to residents, and how the spa is booked. The street itself is quiet but narrow, so ask about arrival by car and about luggage access if that matters to you.

Category Art Hotels•Location Rue Saint-Roch, Paris•Checked September 2031

Rome, Italy

Palazzo Ripetta fills an eighteenth-century building on via di Ripetta, in the old field of Mars between the Tiber and piazza del Popolo. The building was raised as a religious institution and later served other uses before becoming a hotel, and its long street front still has the flat, repetitive window rhythm of an institutional plan.

A colonnaded courtyard sits at the centre of the block and gives the public rooms their light. Around it are a restaurant, a bar and lounges, with corridors running the length of the wings; commissioned contemporary work hangs in the circulation spaces. The courtyard is the orienting room of the building, and most routes cross it.

Ask whether the courtyard is in use for private events on your dates, since that changes how the ground floor works, and whether the restaurant serves non-residents. Rooms differ a good deal in size and outlook in a converted plan, so state what you need in writing when you enquire.

Category Art Hotels•Location Via di Ripetta, Rome•Checked September 2031

Porto, Portugal

Torel Palace is a nineteenth-century mansion on rua de Camões, in the upper part of central Porto above the Trindade district. The house was built for a merchant family in the era when Porto's wealth was moving uphill from the river, and it keeps its garden, its ironwork and its stone stair to the street.

Common rooms in the mansion carry the hotel's collection: paintings and objects are hung in the salons, on the stair and along the corridors, and rooms are named after Portuguese figures rather than numbered alone. A second building nearby is run by the same operator, and the two are counted as one house in some listings.

If the collection is your reason for going, ask which rooms are open to residents during the day, since salons are sometimes used privately. Ask also which of the two buildings your room is in, and how the garden and breakfast are arranged when the weather turns.

Category Art Hotels•Location Rua de Camões, Porto•Checked September 2031

Charleston, United States

The Dewberry is set in the former L. Mendel Rivers Federal Building on Meeting Street, facing Marion Square in the centre of Charleston. The building went up in the mid twentieth century as government offices, and the conversion kept the flat modernist front and the plain grid of windows rather than dressing it up as something older.

The lobby was rebuilt in brass, marble and walnut and reads as one designed room; a bar sits off it, with a restaurant and meeting rooms on the same level and a further bar on an upper floor with a view over the square. Marion Square itself is a public park with a market at certain times of the week.

Ask which bars are open to non-residents and on what evenings, since the upper room in particular has limited capacity. It is also worth asking about noise from Meeting Street and from the square if you want a quiet side, and about parking near the building.

Category Art Hotels•Location Meeting Street, Charleston•Checked September 2031

Ibiza, Spain

Casa Cook Ibiza lies inland from Sant Antoni de Portmany, away from the coast road and among low walls and dry planting. The buildings are white, of two storeys at most, and set as separate blocks rather than a single mass, so the site reads as a small cluster of houses rather than a resort behind one front.

Blocks are placed around a central open space that holds the pool, the terraces and the planting, and the restaurant and bar open onto it. Rooms have their own outdoor terrace, and much of the daily life of the house happens outside under shade structures rather than in interior public rooms.

Because the layout is outdoor, ask what happens on cool or wet days, and which parts of the site are covered. Ask too about the distance to the nearest village and beach and about transport, since the property sits away from bus routes and the walk is on country roads.

Category Art Hotels•Location Near Sant Antoni de Portmany, Ibiza•Checked September 2031

San Antonio, United States

Hotel Emma stands in the former Pearl Brewery on the north bank of the San Antonio River, at the upper end of the river walk. The brewhouse dates from the late nineteenth century and was designed by a Chicago architect in the German brewery manner, in brick with heavy arched openings, and the conversion left that outer form intact.

Brewing equipment was kept where it stood: tanks, cast iron columns, gearing and pipework remain in the lobby and the bar, and rooms were fitted around them. A library of books gathered for the house sits off the lobby, and the wider Pearl site around the hotel holds a public plaza, a market and food halls open to the district.

Ask which parts of the old plant are accessible to residents and when the public rooms are busiest, because the lobby also serves the neighbourhood. If quiet matters, ask about rooms facing the plaza, which is used for markets and outdoor programmes through much of the year.

Category Art Hotels•Location Pearl district, San Antonio•Checked September 2031