An 800-year-old Irish castle, a brutalist Icelandic bunker created to worship the Northern Lights, a Moorish fantasy in Tenerife. Europe’s most beautiful hotels have officially been named, and they couldn’t be more different from each other. They all have one thing in common, though: they’ve just made the cut for ’s ranking of the world’s 33 most beautiful hotels.
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Topping the whole list is Ashford Castle in Ireland, crowned Best Heritage Hotel. Guarded by Irish wolfhound statues, the 800-year-old estate has passed through aristocrats, the Guinness family and Oscar Wilde’s guest list, and today comes with Donegal crystal chandeliers and a spa pool ringed with seashells.
Third on the global list and second in Europe is a regal beauty in Florence. The Four Seasons Hotel Firenze took the prize for most beautiful gardens and grounds, housed inside a fifteenth-century Renaissance palazzo surrounded by 11 acres of manicured, secluded gardens. Over in Malta, The Phoenicia scooped the most beautiful pool, its Bastion infinity pool looking out over Manoel Island from behind sixteenth-century limestone fortifications.
Iceland’s ION Adventure Hotel takes a different approach to beauty, with harsh, brutalist angles protruding from a moss-laden hillside, deliberately designed to emit minimal light so it doesn’t compete with the Northern Lights overhead. Tenerife’s Ritz-Carlton Abama goes the opposite direction entirely, all salmon-coloured buildings, Moorish architecture and koi-filled lakes, accessed via a zig-zag drive through banana trees.
The rest of Europe’s contingent spans London’s eco-conscious 1 Hotel Mayfair; Le Pavillon de la Reine in Paris; Scotland’s grand 1924 chateau Gleneagles; Sicily’s art nouveau stunner Villa Igiea in Palermo; Amsterdam‘s glass-and-steel Conservatorium; and Porto’s maximalist Hospes Infante Sagres, the city’s first five-star hotel.
Europe’s 11 most beautiful hotels
- Ashford Castle, Ireland
- Four Seasons Hotel Firenze, Italy
- Ritz-Carlton Abama, Tenerife
- ION Adventure Hotel, Iceland
- The Phoenicia, Malta
- 1 Hotel Mayfair, London
- Le Pavillon de la Reine, Paris
- Gleneagles, Scotland
- Villa Igiea, Palermo
- Mandarin Oriental Conservatorium, Amsterdam
- Hospes Infante Sagres, Porto
See the full list of the world’s 33 most beautiful hotels to find out which properties beat Europe to the very top spots.
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