There are hotels that hang a nondescript painting above the bed and then there are those where art is the reason to visit. These seven properties fall into the latter camp.
Collectors, curators and commissioners have been working on these spaces, turning guest corridors into veritable galleries, sea-facing lounges into sculpture parks and Victorian rooms into a Picasso viewing area.
From a reborn Brutalist government building in Doha, which has become a showcase for regional talent, to a Maldivian island where a guest’s morning walk is mapped like a museum floor-plan, art here is not an afterthought, but the premise from which everything else follows.
El Fenn, Marrakesh
The name says everything: Riad El Fenn (the hotel’s original name) translates from Arabic as “house of art”. When co-owner Vanessa Branson opened this property in the Medina in 2004, only five minutes from the bustling Jemaa el-Fnaa, she brought her personal collection with her, including works by William Kentridge, Sir Terry Frost and David Shrigley, and hung them in corridors and bedrooms.
The next year, Branson cofounded the Marrakesh Biennale, running it for six seasons and embedding El Fenn at the centre of the city’s arts ecosystem. Since then, the collection has grown to include Moroccan and other African artists – from Hassan Hajjaj to Leila Alaoui – alongside names from around the world. The permanent collection lives across every surface, making the line between art hotel and artist’s home deliberately thin.
The hotel also offers twice-yearly temporary exhibitions in collaboration with local art galleries. To mark March’s 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Moroccan artist Rita Alaoui painted a series of large-scale murals on to the walls of the hotel’s main entrance corridors, a fresh backdrop to the Inner Garden, celebrating the power of nature.
Hotel Savoy, Florence
One would think the setting of Hotel Savoy is artistic enough, since it’s set in Piazza della Repubblica, right by the Duomo, Ponte Vecchio and Via de’ Tornabuoni. Yet, the Rocco Forte property was dressed by interior designer Olga Polizzi, who has a taste for the exceptional, adorning this hotel in signature prints and Renaissance antiques.
This commitment to art extends beyond the hotel’s interiors. It’s also embedded within the experiences on offer – think guided tours of Florence’s most glorious cultural landmarks or a private painting session with a local artist.
Until August 23, Savoy suite guests can also access exclusive after-hours tours of a landmark retrospective of Mark Rothko, taking place in venues across the city – from Palazzo Strozzi to Museo di San Marco, curated by the artist’s son Christopher Rothko and art historian Elena Geuna.
The Ned Doha
Before it was a hotel, this building on Doha’s Corniche housed Qatar’s Ministry of Interior in a 1970s Brutalist structure designed by Lebanese architect William Sednaoui. Ahead of the 2022 Fifa World Cup, however, David Chipperfield Architects transformed it into The Ned Doha, and the result is one of the most considered hotel art programmes in the Gulf.
The collection features more than 350 works by close to 100 regional artists, with more than half living in Doha and nearly three-quarters of who are women – a conscious decision rooted in the curation brief given to Mathqaf, an arts consultancy cofounded by art historians Wadha Al-Aqeedi and Elina Sairanen.
Works are threaded through the lobby, restaurants, guest rooms and the private members’ club, turning a stay here into an up-close encounter with the contemporary creative scene of Qatar and the wider region.
Joali Maldives
The Maldives is not short of luxury resorts by any means, but Joali, which bills itself as the archipelago’s first art-immersive luxury island resort, operates on a different playing field. Its 73 beach and water villas sit on an island where more than 20 international artists have made permanent interventions, allowing themselves to be absorbed by the environment entirely.
An island passport guides guests through the works like a gallery map, and an art studio offers resident programmes. For example, the Heron Chair by South African vernacular sculptor Porky Hefer is placed on Mura Beach, where you’ll also find an interactive sculpture by Cuban-American artist Gabriela Noelle, which invites children to eat ice cream and play.
Elsewhere, a sculpted communal table by American designer Misha Kahn, who drew inspiration from Gaudi and Niki de Saint Phalle, sits alongside coiled rope forms by Canadian sculptor Doug Johnston, designed to make guests “feel the waves and textures of the island”. In The Living Room, find French artist Jeanne Susplugas’s illustrated virtual reality journey inspired by the property, as well as British wildlife artist Josh Gluckstein’s Green Turtle Coral Garden, which invites reflection on the fragility of coral ecosystems and the resilience of marine life in the Indian Ocean.
The Silo, Cape Town
Few hotels occupy a more loaded address in the art world. The Silo sits within the V&A Waterfront’s repurposed grain silo complex, the same structure that also houses the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, one of the continent’s most important modern art institutions.
Guests at this five-star Royal Portfolio property, owned by Liz Biden, wake up inside a hotel that treats its collection as a living programme rather than a fixed installation. In February, a new exhibition called The Salon opened in The Vault, which sits in the property, offering an intimate snapshot of its curatorial approach over 12 months.
For travellers who want to further explore regional talent, the proximity to Zeitz MOCAA means some of the most significant African contemporary art is effectively on your doorstep.
The Fife Arms, Braemar
The village of Braemar sits in the Cairngorms, with a modest population, but spectacular surroundings. It is, perhaps, an unlikely home for one of Britain’s most extraordinary private art collections. But The Fife Arms – a Victorian coaching inn overhauled and reopened by Iwan and Manuela Wirth, co-founders of the noted Swiss modern and contemporary art gallery Hauser & Wirth – contains more than 16,000 works, from 19th-century antiques to major contemporary commissions.
Zhang Enli, Guillermo Kuitca, Subodh Gupta, Richard Jackson and Bharti Kher have all created site-specific pieces for the building. A Picasso hangs near an ornately carved chimney piece carved with scenes from Robert Burns’s poetry. There’s also a delicate watercolour of a stag’s head painted by Queen Victoria. Guests are offered a complimentary daily art tour, while visitors can take one alongside afternoon tea. You could easily stay a week and still be discovering what’s around you.
Hamilton Princess, Bermuda
The Hamilton Princess has been Bermuda’s grande dame since 1885 – affectionately known as the island’s “Pink Palace” – but its art collection is far more present-day.
The works on display read like a roll call of the most recognised names in contemporary and modern art: Ai Weiwei’s Untitled (Divina Proportione), a huali wood piece exploring material and meaning; a Julian Opie silkscreen depicting figures on the streets of Seoul; and Mr Brainwash’s Charlie Chaplin (Just Kidding), a screen print from an edition of 100 that sets the hotel’s irreverent tone.
Elsewhere, the collection also includes famed artists such as Warhol, Banksy and Hirst, including a signed set of Warhol’s Mick Jagger prints. Each corridor and dining room at this property functions as a curated exhibition rather than a holding space for decoration. The hotel publishes its own Little Book of Art, a room-by-room companion to the works, and the entire collection is free for all to see.
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