A small, carefully kept directory for people who travel to slow down. Start with a ranked guide, or browse every hotel we have reviewed.
Japanese stays for switching off completely, from a ryokan tower hidden inside a Tokyo skyscraper to private volcanic baths in Hokkaido, a cabin terrace under Mount Fuji, and a cedar-forest hideaway on Yakushima.
Read the guide
Places built where there is nothing else: a valley lodge in northern Iceland, a concrete house in the Utah desert, a canyon camp in Arabia, a boat-only bay in Vietnam, ten tents in the Namib. Chosen for how little you can hear.
Read the guide
Five places where the bath is the reason to go, not a facility on the list: a Zumthor quartzite temple in the Alps, an Aman onsen over a Japanese bay, a lava-set lagoon in Iceland, a ryokan of private volcanic baths in Hokkaido, and a 150-year-old inn in a hot-spring town.
Read the guide
Tuscany, Italy
Ten rooms in a restored 1622 farm hamlet on a lonely hilltop above the Val d'Orcia. Vineyards and woodland on every side, a garden-to-table dinner each evening, and very little reason to leave.
View hotel
Tuscany, Italy
A restored medieval hamlet in the hills near Montaione, between Florence and Pisa, at the centre of a 1,100-hectare private estate of vineyards, olive groves and woodland. The borgo holds the hotel, an 800-year-old castle, a church, a spa and the largest golf course in Tuscany.
View hotel
Hampshire, United Kingdom
A Georgian red-brick manor on the 500-acre Dogmersfield Park estate in Hampshire, with an 18th-century stable block turned 27,000-square-foot spa, an 11th-century lake, and miles of parkland walking within about an hour of London.
View hotel