Sheer Terra

Forget haunted hotels, you’ve seen that list a million times. This Halloween, we’re focusing on hotels in perilous locations that are not for the faint of heart.

Halloween, with its haunted houses and horror movies, is a way to experience a controlled form of terror. Like roller coasters and skydiving, it’s a chance for us to dangle our feet over the precipice of danger without any real risk. Luxury boutique hotels, on the other hand, are not as eager to participate in the fear-based economy. Short of using ghost stories as a marketing gimmick, it’s not really their thing.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t thrills to be found. These thirteen hotels have put down roots in some scarily precarious positions, perching themselves on cliffsides and mountaintops and other altitudes where humans don’t normally exist. Their foundations were driven as deep as a wooden stake into Dracula’s heart — so the terra is plenty firma — but they still provide a strong enough dose of excitement for those who feel most alive when they’re cheating death. Or for people who like cool, beautiful hotels. That works too.
 

Il San Pietro di Positano

Amalfi Coast, Italy

A small 17th-century chapel marks the entrance to Il San Pietro di Positano, while the rest of the hotel clings desperately to the cliffside below, each level descending the face like a staircase.

Alila Jabal Akhdar

Nizwa, Oman

This picture might seem too good to be true, but the reality of Alila Jabal Akhdar is no less wondrous. The hotel sits atop a jagged cliff within Oman’s Al Hajar mountain range, offering mesmerizing views into the surrounding gorge (and sometimes over the clouds).

VORA Private Villas

Santorini, Greece

Because of its challenging location on a steep Santorini hillside, it was necessary to build Vora by hand using traditional methods — a technique that ensures the hotel meshes well with its epic surroundings.

Viceroy Bali

Ubud, Indonesia

The infinity pools at Viceroy Bali are known for their awe-inspiring views — their edges peer out into space from high up on a hillside overlooking the lush (and steep) Lembah Valley.

The Kumaon

Himalayas, India

That the Kumaon even exists is almost unbelievable. When the owners found this site, high among the Indian Himalayas, no roads led to it. A simple log cabin would have been challenging enough to construct. The Kumaon is no log cabin. It is a work of hotel art, a feat of tropical modernism superimposed on a mountaintop almost entirely by hand.

Corte della Maestà

Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy

Corte della Maestà makes its home in a medieval village that was completely deserted after a 17th-century earthquake. La cittá che muore – the dying city — is perched on a rock outcropping, accessible only via a long footbridge.

Nhow Berlin

Berlin, Germany

And now for something completely different. The upper floors of Nhow Berlin, with their shiny metallic skin, cantilever dramatically out over the river Spree. The design is a triumph by architect Sergei Tchoban.

Hotel Viura

Villabuena de Alava, Spain

Continuing with the theme of groundbreaking architecture (and physics), Hotel Viura’s precariously-stacked guest rooms imagine what a hotel might look like if it were designed by Picasso in his cubist period.

Rosewood Guangzhou

Guangzhou, China

The Rosewood Guangzhou may be the highest five-star hotel in the world, reaching all the way to the 108th floor of the CTF Finance Center. But it also scales heights that are more metaphorical, and those are the ones we’re more interested in: you’d be hard pressed to find contemporary interiors more elegant than Rosewood’s.

Ladera Resort

Soufrière, St. Lucia

The open-air, open-wall suites at Ladera Resort cling to a volcanic ridge far up above Pitons Bay, making for some of the Caribbean’s most extraordinary views. We hope you aren’t prone to sleepwalking.

Explora Patagonia

Torres del Paine, Chile

Requiring a five-hour drive on some rather difficult roadways, just getting to Explora Patagonia is a bit of an adventure. But the journey is more than worth it for this location, only yards from the onrushing Salto Chico waterfall.

Post Ranch Inn

Big Sur, California

It would be difficult for any man-made structure to compete with these cliffside views of the Pacific, or the majesty of the redwood forests; but this strange and decadent little hotel holds its own.

Tower Hotel Nagoya

Nagoya, Japan

Nagoya’s 1954-vintage television tower is a local landmark, and now that it’s been decommissioned, it’s something else as well: the Tower Hotel Nagoya is built entirely in and around the tower’s structure. We mean “around” literally — the iron support beams cut diagonally through the walls, floors, and ceilings of the rooms.