The coolest rooms ever: 80 hotels to lust after

We love a coffee table book. There’s something deeply indulgent about collapsing onto the couch with a hefty volume on your lap and idly flicking through pages of beauty and inspiration. But because these glossy imports often come with equally glossy price tags, we’ve become discerning about the ones we’ll actually cough up for. Culture: The Leading Hotels of the World – the new Phaidon edition – makes the cut.

It’s the second in a series celebrating exceptional hospitality and, simply put, it nails the trifecta: banging hotels to lust after, elegant writing and page-turning design. More than 80 properties from LHW’s portfolio of over 400 are featured, each one given the luxury of multi-page spreads and lavish photography.

The book is organised geographically, which means you can hop from Venetian palazzos to Balinese jungle hideaways without leaving your living room. Our closest entry is KwaZulu-Natal’s Thanda Safari Private Game Reserve, which we absolutely wouldn’t mind a little excursion to.

Other highlights? There are too many to mention. De L’Europe in Amsterdam, with its tulips and burnt-orange velvet framing a museum-edition Van Gogh. The bamboo-lined paths of Capella Ubud in Bali. Terracotta craftsmanship in Portugal’s São Lourenço do Barrocal. And the likes of Le Sirenuse in Positano (our cover shot), Royal Mansour in Marrakech, and Venice’s Violino d’Oro.

Beyond wanderlust, the images offer an eclectic trove of inspiration for design obsessives. Whether you’re into arts and crafts warmth, or minimal monastic calm, there’s a hotel here you’ll want to remodel your entire house around.

Alongside the eye candy are essays, travel tips and insider notes from the likes of Stephen Fry, Deborah Needleman and Andy Baraghani, plus a foreword by legendary travel writer Pico Iyer. Designed by our absolute fav designer (and long-time MC of the dearly departed Design Indaba) Michael Bierut, the book itself is an object of desire: wrapped in Moroccan-blue silk with silver foil and patterned edges, it’s as much a design piece as a travel one.

Luxury is often dismissed as surface gloss – this book argues otherwise. Culture proves that the world’s great hotels are not just places to sleep, but living archives of tradition, art, architecture and taste. A keeper.

Culture is distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball with a recommended retail price of R1,870.

This article was produced in partnership with Discovery.

_{Top image: Le Sirenuse in Positano.}