Grand Dames and Historic Landmark Hotels
Hotels that were already famous before any of the brands above existed, in places without their own city list on this site: Raffles Singapore, Belmond Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro, Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, Fairmont Banff Springs, Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, The Greenbrier in West Virginia, Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Reid's Palace in Madeira, Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin, Pera Palace in Istanbul, and Grand Hotel Tremezzo on Lake Como. We weigh how much of the original building survives real use rather than a museum-style restoration, the story that made it famous, and whether staying there still feels like an event.
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A 15th-century Gothic palazzo on Venice's Grand Canal, built for a Doge and home to Hemingway for extended periods, this Luxury Collection hotel preserves five centuries of Venetian history within walls that have witnessed the lagoon's entire transformation from republic to modern city.
- 2
A legendary Berlin hotel founded in 1907 by Lorenz Adlon, destroyed by fire in 1945, demolished in the 1980s during the Cold War, and rebuilt in 1997 at the Brandenburg Gate frontier.
- 3
Rio's glamorous 1923 Art Deco masterpiece, designed by the French architect Joseph Gire and host to film stars and heads of state, now the beating heart of Carnival celebrations.
- 4
A clifftop hotel opened in 1891 by William Reid's sons in Funchal, Madeira, designed by acclaimed British architects and set amid 40,000 square meters of subtropical gardens. Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Gregory Peck have stayed here amid the Atlantic views.
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An 1887 Victorian landmark on car-free Mackinac Island, reached by ferry, famous for the world's longest porch and a meticulously preserved 19th-century guest experience.
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An 1888 Victorian seaside resort built by American visionaries in Coronado, California, featuring pioneering electric lighting and starring in film history while remaining one of America's greatest wooden buildings.
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An 1887 colonial landmark built by Persian-Armenian hoteliers in early Singapore, home to the Singapore Sling and host to royalty and literary giants during the Golden Age of Travel.
- 8
A Mediterranean Revival resort founded by Spencer Penrose in 1918 on a 3,000-acre Colorado Springs estate. Built with $3 million in 1918 dollars and designed by Warren and Wetmore, The Broadmoor has held Forbes Five-Star and AAA Five-Diamond ratings continuously for over a century.
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A National Historic Landmark resort rooted in 1778 mineral springs, rebuilt in 1913 as a Georgian masterpiece with a secret Cold War bunker for Congress carved beneath the Allegheny Mountains.
- 10
Built in 1896 by Caspar Badrutt in the Swiss Alps, this palace hotel transformed St. Moritz from a summer spa town into the world's premier winter destination and remains the architectural anchor of alpine luxury, still owned by the founding family.
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A Châteauesque landmark built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1893, dominating Quebec City's skyline from within the walls of a UNESCO World Heritage site. The hotel hosted pivotal WWII conferences and remains one of the world's most photographed buildings.
- 12
A Belle Époque palace built in 1895 by the Orient Express company in Istanbul's historic Pera district, with Agatha Christie's storied room and Atatürk's preserved quarters still drawing travelers to this bridge between Europe and Asia.