Hirado Castle Hotel - Historic Japanese Castle Stay

There's a sandstone spiral staircase inside Schloss Schadau that is considered one of the finest in Europe. The walls are dressed in 170-year-old Parisian leather. The ceiling in the Bubenberg Salon is not actually wood - it just looks that way, painted with such virtuosity that the illusion holds even …

This isn't one of those hotels that calls itself a castle because it has turrets painted on the wallpaper. Peckforton Castle is the real deal – or at least as real as a Victorian landowner's fantasy of medieval life could get. Built between 1844 and 1850, it comes complete with …

Rising from the rocky heights of Pico de los Hidalgos, the Parador de Alarcón offers something most hotels can't: the chance to sleep in a genuine 8th-century fortress. With just 14 rooms, this converted castle in Spain's Cuenca province delivers an intimate experience that feels more like staying in a …

High in Portugal's Serra da Estrela, an orange-hued fortress sprawls across the mountainside like something out of a Wes Anderson film. This is no ordinary hotel. For decades, tuberculosis patients took the air on its curative balconies. Then it sat abandoned for 40 years, briefly housing refugees from Portugal's colonial …

Libušín sits on a mountain pass in the Czech Republic's Moravian-Silesian Beskids, looking like something out of a Brothers Grimm tale. This isn't some modern Alpine resort masquerading as traditional – it's the real deal, a wooden lodge dripping with hand-carved details and Art Nouveau flourishes that somehow manages to …

Standing on a pink granite cliff above the Nile since 1899, the Sofitel Legend Old Cataract Aswan is the kind of place where history doesn't just whisper – it practically shouts from the ruby chandeliers and horseshoe arches. Agatha Christie sat on the terrace penning Death on the Nile here. …

There's a button on the door of your room at Huus Quell that cuts the Wi-Fi. It's a small thing, but it tells you everything about what Jan Schoch is going for here. The founder of Switzerland's first tech unicorn, a former Goldman Sachs man who spent years on Wall …

There's a building at Hyde Park Corner that looks like it's trying to set sail. All glass and steel outriggers, semi-suspended on anti-vibration bearings to absorb the tremors of the Piccadilly Line rumbling underneath - it's one of the last projects from the late architect Richard Rogers, the man behind …

Sitting on the edge of the Indian Ocean in Umhlanga, The Oyster Box is the kind of place where you can start your morning with unlimited oysters and sparkling wine at breakfast, spend your afternoon learning to make proper Durban curry, and end your evening with a cigar in a …

Somewhere in western Belize, a waterfall is tumbling into a turquoise pool that almost nobody sees. It isn't on a popular trail or a backpacker's bucket list. It's just sitting there, doing its thing, above the jungle canopy of the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, which stretches across 107,000 acres …