10 hotels
Hotels on the water
Palaces that rise from a lake, a bay or the sea: the island palace of Udaipur, the sail of Dubai, the beachfront of Rio.
Taj Lake Palace
An 18th-century white marble palace that seems to float on Lake Pichola, a hotel since 1963.
Burj al-Arab
Tom Wright’s sail-shaped tower on its own island off Jumeirah Beach, an all-suite hotel since 1999.
Copacabana Palace
Joseph Gire’s 1923 white palace on Copacabana beach, the address of Rio’s grand balls and film stars.
Villa d'Este
A cardinal's villa of 1568 on Lake Como, home of Caroline of Brunswick, a hotel since 1873 with a swimming pool floating on the lake.
151 rooms
Beau-Rivage Palace
The Lake Geneva palace at Ouchy where the 1912 Treaty of Lausanne was signed and the 1923 treaty negotiated, in a four-hectare lakeside park.
Beau-Rivage Geneva
A family-owned hotel on the Quai du Mont-Blanc since 1865 where Empress Elisabeth of Austria died after her assassination in 1898.
52 rooms
Ca' Sagredo
A 15th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal, seat of a doge's family from 1661, whose Longhi and Tiepolo decorations survive in a 42-room hotel.
42 rooms
Marina Bay Sands
Three 55-storey towers carrying a 340-metre SkyPark with a 150-metre infinity pool 200 metres above Marina Bay, designed by Moshe Safdie.
2561 rooms
Hotel del Coronado
An 1888 wooden Victorian resort on the beach across the bay from San Diego, among the first hotels lit by electricity and the set of Some Like It Hot.
Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok
Bangkok's riverside hotel since 1876, where Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham stayed and whose 1887 Authors' Wing still stands.
331 rooms