Is there any greater holiday pleasure than that self-congratulatory thrill on arriving at your hotel to find it is pinch-me marvellous?
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Marvellousness is to be expected if you’re staying at a five-star grande dame.
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But winkling out something that’s cheap and lovely – that’s the real buzz.
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Many of Europe’s hotels are lumped into the three-star category, which is dominated by budget chains and dreary B&Bs.
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Yet it is also home to some ineffably charming small stays – sustainability passion projects and ancestral homes turned boutique boltholes.
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Often, the very things that prevent these small hotels from winning more stars is what keeps them special: their intimate scale; their refusal to install a lift in a Renaissance palazzo.
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For people who don’t like golf or the gym, who value what a star-rating system cannot measure: character, beauty, warmth – those qualities that make them unforgettable.
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In the morning, breakfast comes courtesy of the vegetable garden, served on the sun-dappled terrace beneath the pines.
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Chic&Basic Habana Hoose, Barcelona
Imagine Vivienne Westwood let loose in a colonial Cuban casa and you’ll have some idea of Chic&Basic Habana Hoose, in Barcelona’s El Born neighbourhood.
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you → imagine → neighbourhood
It’s Scottish meets punk meets Cuba – young and hip and chic, though hardly basic.
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It → ’ → ?
Rooms are bonkers-bold and fabulous, bathrooms dark and inviting, beds large and well-dressed.
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This handsome hacienda, bougainvillea clambering all over its lemon and white facade, still feels like a grand family home, though it took a 10-year restoration from neglected olive farmhouse to get there.
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Gardens are glorious: paths through towering oleander, arbours strewn with cushions, a mosaic-tiled pool.
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The kitchen serves simple, seasonal dishes beautifully cooked.
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Seville and Jerez de la Frontera aren’t far, but it’s tempting not to leave at all.
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It’s easy to forget that Marbs, with all its glitzy five-star resorts, is in Spain’s most fiery, passionate region of Andalusia.
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Hotel Claude is a reminder of where you are – it’s a classic 17th-century Andalusian house, once home to Eugenie, Empress of France, with a colonnaded Moorish courtyard at its heart, a peaceful roof terrace, and galleried upper floors leading to seven rooms and suites, decorated with contemporary furnishings and irreverent art.
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This unfussy, sandy-toes kind of place has simple rooms and a laid-back restaurant that serves excellent fish and paella.
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ITALY
AdAstra, Florence
An eclectic mix of modern and historic come together at AdAstra, a characterful 16-room hotel set within a family-owned mansion with expansive gardens in the groovy Oltrarno neighbourhood.
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Design is bold and beautifully curated: mid-century flea market finds offset frescoed ceilings and antique chandeliers, and books and fireplaces give it the feel of a new-generation aristo’s apartment.
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Casa Olea, Lake Como
Superstars have been taking dips in Como’s green-blue waters since the Golden Age of Hollywood, Italian nobility far longer, and its waterside villas tend to be five-star fancy.
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So three-star Casa Olea is quite the find – a 19th-century rectory turned eco hotel, completely solar-powered, with six sophisticated, contemporary rooms, a saltwater pool and a garden overlooking the lake, plus a bird hide in the neighbouring woodland for spotting bee-eaters, golden orioles and turtles.
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Converted from an early 1900s apartment block in Rome’s boho Monti neighbourhood, whippersnapper Condominio Monti is refreshingly modern – velvet headboards, bold wallpapers, art deco lighting – designed by two young locals.
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Breakfast is served on the rooftop, and there’s a proper Roman restaurant on the ground floor.
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The ceilings steal the show at Palazzo Vannoni, in the old heart of Levanto on the Italian Riviera.
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The seaside town is just outside the Cinque Terre, making it a good base for exploring the candy-coloured coast on foot or by car.
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Levanto has its own smattering of pink and yellow houses, churches and castles, piazzas and restaurants – plus the only sandy beach on this stretch of coast.
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Back in the 1920s, the owner of this mountain refuge eschewed the trad chalet detailing in favour of clean-lined modernism, and today Hotel Brio cuts a sharp silhouette against the pine-forested slopes.
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Rooms in Briol are alpine-adorable – lots of hefty scrubbed pine and white linen, windows opening onto truly uplifting views, and air so clean you’ll break into song.
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In recent years they’ve added a treehouse suite, plus a few family apartments in the forest below the hotel.
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The regal rooms of Relais Monastero Santa Teresa are scattered across two palazzi and a medieval monastery in Nardo, down in Italy’s hot heel.
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This once-grand little city has a many-layered history apparent in its art and architecture – Roman, Norman, Byzantine, Renaissance, Baroque – and a stay at this splendid albergo diffuso (“scattered hotel”) literally immerses you in its past and present glories.
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La Maison de Lucie, Honfleur
Take a morning train or drive out from Paris and you can be in Honfleur in time for lunch – which, on the Normandy coast, means oysters and a bottle of white.
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Tucked away in the medieval streets behind Honfleur’s impossibly quaint harbour is 12-bedroom La Maison de Lucie, a beautiful house that’s furnished with antiques, warm colours and art all over the oak-panelled walls.
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Some rooms have terraces, others terrific views through shuttered windows that let in the light that drew Monet and Turner to this spot.
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Les Florets, Provence
All the trademarks of Provence are found at family-run Les Florets: a sun-dappled stone terrace set with wrought-iron chairs; views over the painterly Vaucluse landscapes and forested slopes of the Dentelles, surrounding villages of absurd prettiness.
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The pool is swisher than you might expect, the restaurant smart but jolly, and the wine list 350 vintages long.
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restaurant → expect → ?
Chateau Richeux looks out across Mont-Saint-Michel Bay and is part of the Roellinger family’s Maisons de Bricourt estate, where Hugo Roellinger’s Le Coquillage is the main attraction, but rooms upstairs in the chateau are exquisite too: warm-hued, wood-panelled, with deep modern beds and antique French furniture.
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Inside, it’s all-white simplicity with citrus zings of colour and bamboo furniture; outside, there’s a delicious little courtyard garden and deckchairs around a pool shaded by palms and pine trees.
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Interiors are beautiful, en-vogue-eclectic, mixing up jewel-coloured fabrics, brocantes and modern finishes.
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…and 35 more, not listed.
The Aporia
