Art Hotels · 6

The gates are wrought iron, made in the first years of the twentieth century, and peacocks are worked into them. The birds face away from the street, into the building. Art Nouveau ironwork of this kind was drawn as one panel first, then forged piece by piece and hung.

Gresham Palace was finished in 1906 on the Pest bank of the Danube, at the head of the Chain Bridge. It was built as an office and apartment block for a London insurance company, and the street front is stone with tall arched windows and a heavy cornice. The hotel arrived much later, after a long restoration.

The gates stand at the main entrance on the square facing the bridge, between the pavement and the covered passage that runs through the middle of the block. You meet them from the outside.

A bomb shelter sits under the building. It was sealed and forgotten for decades, then found again during construction work in the courtyard. The walls are thick concrete, the space is low and narrow, and it has been kept close to the state in which it was uncovered.

The Metropole opened in 1901, in the French colonial period, and the oldest wing is white stucco with green shutters and a dark canopy over the door. Later wings were added behind it as the hotel grew. From the pavement the historic block reads as a long, low front in the middle of the government quarter.

The shelter lies beneath the courtyard at the centre of the block, between the old wing and the newer one. A narrow stair goes down to it from ground level near the bar.

Instead of standing in the garden, the swimming pool sits out on the water of Lake Como, on a floating platform moored off the shore. Swimmers are at lake level with the far bank in view. The platform holds the pool, its surround and the steps that reach it.

Villa d'Este was built in the sixteenth century as a private villa on the western shore of the lake, and the gardens behind it climb the slope in terraces. The main house is rendered and pale, with regular windows and a formal water stair on the axis of the garden. It became a hotel in the nineteenth century.

The platform is moored off the lawn in front of the villa, on the Cernobbio shore, a short walk from the main house. It is visible from the waterfront path and from boats crossing the lake.

Pale columns run down both sides of the lobby, carrying a high moulded ceiling. They date from 1928, when the hotel opened, and they have been kept through the changes made to the building since. The room they stand in is tall, open and lit from above rather than from the walls.

The hotel opened in 1928 on the Kowloon waterfront, built as a low, symmetrical block around a forecourt, with a dark stone base and a light upper wall. A tall tower was added at the back in the early 1990s and now stands above the older wings. The old front still faces the harbour across the road.

The colonnade is on the ground floor, in the lobby immediately behind the main doors on the forecourt side. It runs the length of the room, so you pass between the columns on the way in.

Set high on the hotel tower, the clock is run three minutes ahead of the correct time. The reason given is the railway station next door: a traveller reading it from the street is pushed to hurry. It is corrected to true time once a year, at Hogmanay.

The building was completed in 1902 as a railway hotel at the east end of Princes Street, in grey stone, with a clock tower rising above the corner. It was designed to sit directly over the tracks of Waverley station, and the tower is one of the fixed points in views along the street and from the bridges.

The clock is on the tower at the corner of Princes Street and North Bridge, above the main entrance. It is read from the street rather than from inside, and it shows on all four faces.

Crown Room is covered by a ceiling of Oregon pine, put together without nails. The boards are jointed and pegged, and the surface curves gently across a very wide room with no column under it. The wood has darkened with age and is the main thing the room is looking at.

The hotel opened in 1888 on the ocean side of Coronado, and it is a timber building, painted white with red roofs and turrets. It was raised quickly, in wood, at a time when a resort of this size on the Pacific coast was unusual. The seaward front has long verandas facing the beach.

Crown Room is on the ground floor of the original wooden building, off the main corridor that runs from the lobby. It is used as a dining room, so the ceiling is seen from a seat rather than in passing.