Olive trees, some of them centuries old, ring a whitewashed farmstead near Savelletri. Its stone tower goes back to the 1500s, when farms on this coast were built to be defended. Rocco Forte Hotels runs the property today, with interiors led by Olga Polizzi.

Rooms keep to a short list of materials: local stone, linen, Puglian ceramics. Colour arrives in small doses. Courtyards and low wings spread across the estate, and a short drive brings you to the Adriatic shore. What earns it a place among art hotels is the editing. Each piece of craft was chosen; nothing was added for show.

Walk two minutes along Rue de Berri from the Champs-Élysées and the noise drops away. This Luxury Collection hotel fills a stately Parisian building in the 8th arrondissement, decorated by Jacques Garcia in his most maximal mood.

Velvet, lacquer and gilt frames crowd the public rooms. Antiquities share walls with paintings, and bedrooms continue the theme in deeper tones. Behind the building, a garden gives the eye somewhere to rest, a rarity this close to the avenue. Minimalists will find it too much. Anyone who enjoys a dense, collected interior will find hours of looking.

Fiesole rises north of Florence, and Il Salviatino occupies a fifteenth-century villa on its slope. Below, the red cathedral dome and most of the city spread out across the valley.

Restoration left the villa's original fabric in view: painted ceilings, stone stairs, old fireplaces. A library and quiet salons fill the ground floor. Gardens drop away in terraces of lawn, clipped hedges and mature trees. The Uffizi and its neighbours are a short drive downhill, and the villa feels like an extension of them at a calmer pitch.