Art Hotels

Fasano Punta del Este sits inland from the Atlantic on a wide stretch of rolling ground, and the first thing a guest notices is how little of it is visible from the approach. The bungalows are low, spread across the site rather than stacked, and the architecture by Isay Weinfeld works in long horizontals of concrete, glass and dark timber. The building is the composition here; the landscape is framed through it in deliberate cuts.

Interiors carry the restraint through. Rooms open to private terraces, materials stay in a narrow range of stone, leather and pale wood, and furniture is chosen with the same editorial eye that shapes the rest of the property. The Fasano group's long association with Brazilian modernism is legible throughout, less as decoration than as a consistent point of view.

Beyond the rooms the estate runs to a golf course, riding stables and a beach club reached by a short drive. Meals lean on the group's Italian kitchen traditions, and the pace of the place is unhurried by design — this is a property that expects guests to stay several days rather than pass through.

• Low-rise bungalow layout
• Architecture by Isay Weinfeld
• Golf course and stables on site
• Separate beach club

The Serras occupies a building on Passeig de Colom, on the harbour side of Barcelona's Gothic quarter, where Pablo Picasso kept one of his early studios. The hotel does not treat that fact as a marketing line so much as a brief: the public rooms are hung with contemporary work, and the design throughout favours clean contemporary lines over period pastiche.

It is a small property by city-centre standards, which shapes the experience — the lobby reads more like a private gallery than a lobby, and the staff-to-guest ratio shows. Rooms at the front look across the port; the quieter ones face inward. Materials are pale and tactile, with a lot of natural light pulled into a building that could easily have been dark.

The rooftop is the property's second argument: a terrace with a small pool and an open view over the waterfront, used for breakfast early and drinks late. Downstairs, the restaurant is run with ambition rather than as an amenity, and the old town begins immediately at the door.

• Gothic Quarter, harbour side
• Site linked to Picasso's early studio
• Rooftop terrace and pool
• Small room count

Villa Feltrinelli is a Liberty-style lakeside villa at Gargnano, built for the Feltrinelli publishing family at the turn of the twentieth century and restored over several years into a hotel of very few rooms. The restoration is the point. Frescoed ceilings, inlaid floors, stained glass and original joinery were conserved rather than replaced, and the hotel reads as a house that has been kept rather than converted.

Accommodation is divided between the main villa and a handful of outbuildings in the gardens — a boathouse, a lodge, a former coach house — each with its own character. No two rooms are alike, and several retain original decorative schemes. Furniture was commissioned or sourced to suit each space individually.

The grounds run down to the water through lemon trees and magnolias, and the kitchen works at a level that draws guests who would otherwise eat elsewhere on the lake. The season is short, closing through the colder months, which keeps the property quiet even at its busiest.

• Liberty-period lakeside villa
• Conserved original frescoes and floors
• Rooms split between villa and outbuildings
• Seasonal opening