Five of the best hotels for viewing art

published 7 June 2019

950-travel-Domaine-des-Etangs — The Domaine des Etangs: "cosy, cerebral and cosmopolitan"

From an 11th century chateau with a Picasso in France to a quirky pub in Aberdeenshire with a Man Ray

The Domaine des Etangs, Charente, France

With just seven suites, the chateau has a "cosy, cerebral and cosmopolitan" feel to it "it's made for city people wanting to snap a Picasso before knocking back pineau des Charentes and be at their desk by 8am on Monday".

From around €650, domainedesetangs.com

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Aman Sveti Stefan, Montenegro

"Heads up, art lovers," says Sean Newsom in The Sunday Times. This July, Aman Sveti Stefan in Montenegro is hosting an "eye-catching" art exhibition, featuring works by Picasso, Miro, Chagall and Warhol. Tickets cost £1,457 for two. "Well, not tickets exactly rooms." The venue is a luxury resort where only the small number of guests get to see the exhibition. Time your viewing for when everyone else is lounging on one of the three private beaches and you could have Picasso's lithograph Deux Femmes and Chagall's L'Offrande d'lie to yourself. "For hours." The exhibition runs until mid-August.

It will be "the icing on the cake" for the restoration of this "extraordinary" 500-year-old island village, which has hosted Novak Djokovic's wedding, as well as Robert De Niro and the Beckhams. A stay here doesn't come cheap. But rest assured "in this sleepy corner of the Balkans, Aman has created a soul-soothing masterpiece".

See aman.com

The Peninsula, Hong Kong

"When the wind blows in Hong Kong, a rainbow ripples in the arms of the Peninsula hotel," says John O'Ceallaigh in The Daily Telegraph. "Draped between its wings like laundry over rope", Janet Echelman's Earthtime 1.26 art installation "is an immense, multicoloured and unfurled fishing net afloat" above the hotel's forecourt fountain, and it looks especially beautiful when spotlit at night.

It is the "showstopper piece" of the new Art in Resonance programme at the famous Hong Kong establishment, which will take place each spring to coincide with Art Basel Hong Kong. "Now when visitors approach the Verandah restaurant for breakfast, they can get lost in Chilean artist's Ivn Navarro's Home." Or in the Peninsula Arcade, guests can sit in "the wonder room" by Shanghai collective Minax a timber-framed cocoon where "meditative gong sounds play and the scent of wood wafts into consciousness". "It felt as though The Peninsula had bestowed a gift on the city."

From HK$5,808, peninsula.com

21c Museum Hotel, Cincinnati

The 21c Museum Hotel in Cincinnati is hosting an exhibition through July called "Truth or Dare: A Reality Show", says John Oseid in Forbes. It is "a stunning presentation" of "playing with what is real and what is not". Brian Knep's Healing Tiles is comprised of "yellowy-greenish blobs that look like biological specimens that swirl in gorgeous patterns

on a hallway floor". Check out the long vitrine in the lift foyer, stuffed with hundreds of camels and every camel-themed item you can think of. "Is it art? Who knows?" But after a stay here, conventional hotels will seem somewhatdull in comparison.

From around £150, 21cmuseumhotels.com

Fife Arms, Aberdeenshire

The "quirky" Fife Arms hotel in Braemar, Aberdeenshire, is owned by Iwan and Manuela Wirth of art gallery Hauser & Wirth, says Genevieve Fox in The Observer. The Elsa Schiaperelli-inspired pink art deco bar is surrounded by Man Rays and the baronial dining room features a mural by Argentinian artist Guillermo Kuitca. "We ate heartily, enjoying wood-fired dishes. Suffice to say, the food is sensational, the staff charming and chatty." As for the library, it "competes with the courtyard, home to a Louise Bourgeois spider, to be my favourite space in a hotel full of surprises".

Breakfast is "an enlivening experience, what with the outsize genitals of a bronze stag at eye level and the menacing presence of a Gerhard Richter eagle to my right". After a "rhapsodic kedgeree we took a tour" of the area, stopping to admire the Linn of Dee, a local picnic spot.

From £250, thefifearms.com

Chris Carter spent three glorious years reading English literature on the beautiful Welsh coast at Aberystwyth University. Graduating in 2005, he left for the University of York to specialise in Renaissance literature for his MA, before returning to his native Twickenham, in southwest London. He joined a Richmond-based recruitment company, where he worked with several clients, including the Queen’s bank, Coutts, as well as the super luxury, Dorchester-owned Coworth Park country house hotel, near Ascot in Berkshire.

Then, in 2011, Chris joined MoneyWeek. Initially working as part of the website production team, Chris soon rose to the lofty heights of wealth editor, overseeing MoneyWeek’s Spending It lifestyle section. Chris travels the globe in pursuit of his work, soaking up the local culture and sampling the very finest in cuisine, hotels and resorts for the magazine’s discerning readership. He also enjoys writing his fortnightly page on collectables, delving into the fascinating world of auctions and art, classic cars, coins, watches, wine and whisky investing.

You can follow Chris on Instagram.