Belmond La Residencia

Mallorca, Spain

For a new perspective on Mallorca you can’t beat Belmond La Residencia, a sixteenth and seventeenth-century villa high in the foothills of the Tramuntana mountains, with views of the idyllic village of Deià and the Mediterranean in the distance.

Biohotel Hermitage

Madonna di Campiglio, Italy

Italy doesn’t do gentle rolling hills — the valleys of Trentino are nothing short of spectacular, and Biohotel Hermitage, the region’s first boutique-style eco-hotel, makes the most of its impossibly dramatic setting.

Grace Santorini

Santorini, Greece

When it comes to destinations with extraordinary views, Santorini is the major leagues. But even given the stiff competition, Grace stands apart, its terraces affording vertigo-inducing views of the island’s volcanic caldera at seemingly every turn.

Gran Hotel La Florida

Barcelona, Spain

Neither an urban boutique nor a rural resort, Gran Hotel La Florida is something unique: on a hilltop a thousand feet above Barcelona, it offers a rare combination of seclusion, access to the city, and panoramic views over the cityscape and the Mediterranean.

Hotel Punta Tragara

Capri, Italy

Capri is another island that’s blessed with far more than its fair share of sublime vistas, and this Le Corbusier–designed villa, with its precarious cliffside perch, surveys the rocky southern coast from a comfortably elevated position.

Hotel12

Bodensdorf, Austria

Despite its bucolic location high up in the Eastern Alps, overlooking the sparkling-blue Lake Ossiach, hotel12 is a far cry from the traditional chalet — it’s more like an elaborate modern art installation that doubles as a boutique hotel.

Rooms Hotel Kazbegi

Stepantsminda, Georgia

The Caucasus Mountains of northern Georgia are spectacular, and possessed of a character all their own — and Rooms Hotel Kazbegi is perfectly placed to frame those landscapes in an artful, almost cinematic way.

Santa Barbara Eco-Beach Resort

Ribeira Grande, Portugal

The Azores, those little volcanic specks in the middle of the Atlantic, feel like the end of the world, which gives Santa Barbara’s modernist villas plenty to look at through their floor-to-ceiling windows.

Shangri-La Hotel, At The Shard

London, England

You don’t have to be a skyscraper aficionado or an architecture junkie to have heard of the Shard; Renzo Piano’s enormous glass edifice is by a considerable distance the tallest building in town.

Shangri-La Hotel, Paris

Paris, France

Paris is not a city whose hotels are generally known for their dramatic views, but from the Shangri-La’s terrace you’ll look straight out at no less storied a landmark than the Eiffel Tower itself.