01 / 09
Art Hotels
6 hotels · numbered 01 to 06
Six hotels where a building made for something else — a village, a castle, a bathhouse, a farm — decides what stays common and what is set aside. The shared part is usually the oldest part, and the rooms are fitted into whatever the old plan left over. Hotels built as hotels are not in this section.
02 / 09
01
Sextantio Albergo Diffuso
Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Abruzzo, Italy
The gist — Guests step out of a bedroom and straight into the paved lanes of a medieval village
What is shared — The village carries the public part of this hotel. Lanes of worn stone, small squares and stepped passages join one building to the next, and reception, the dining room and the sitting rooms stand in separate houses along them. Moving between those rooms means going outdoors, past people who live here all year.
What is yours — A room takes up part of an old house and is often reached by its own stair. Walls are thick, windows are small, and the furnishing stays close to what the village once used: wool covers, plain wood, iron and a hearth in several of them. Behind the door nothing is jointly used.
Where the line falls — The line falls at each front door. Between one room and any other part of the hotel lie open air, paving and weather, with no indoor passage joining them, so leaving a room already means leaving the private half of the plan.
Settle in advance — Settle the matter of luggage in advance, because the lanes between houses are stepped, paved in stone and closed to cars.
Sources seen: March 2027
03 / 09
02
Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan
Hayakawa, Yamanashi, Japan
The gist — Bathing belongs to the whole house, while sleeping happens on tatami behind a sliding screen
What is shared — Bathing is the common act here. Water from the mountain spring feeds indoor pools and open baths beside the river, and guests walk to them along wooden corridors in cotton robes. Dining rooms, the lounge and the long window seats over the valley pass from one party to the next through the day.
What is yours — A guest room is a floor of tatami with a low table, an alcove for a scroll and paper screens on the river side. Bedding is laid on the matting rather than standing in the room, so the same floor serves for sitting by day. With the bathing placed elsewhere, the room keeps very little plumbing.
Where the line falls — Here the line falls at a sliding screen rather than a heavy door. Footwear stays outside it, the corridor stays public, and a single panel of paper and wood separates a private floor from a passage the whole house walks.
Settle in advance — Settle your transport in advance, since the valley road above the station is narrow and served by very few buses.
Sources seen: March 2027
04 / 09
03
Château de Bagnols
Bagnols, Beaujolais, France
The gist — A thirteenth-century castle keeps its state rooms open to all and its chambers set into old walls
What is shared — Ceremonial rooms make up the shared half. A guardroom with a wide hearth, painted halls, the vaulted cellars and the terraces inside the moat are crossed by everybody, and the gardens beyond the drawbridge run out to vines. These spaces were built for gathering, and the hotel still uses them that way.
What is yours — Chambers sit inside the thickness of the medieval building, in the towers and along the upper floors. Each keeps its own beams, deep window seats cut through stone, and a floor that steps and slopes with the age of the walls. Two chambers rarely resemble one another, because no two old rooms match.
Where the line falls — A heavy door at the head of a spiral stair marks the change. Below it the castle is a house for everyone, above it the same masonry is divided into single rooms, and the stair itself belongs to neither side.
Settle in advance — Settle the approach in advance, as the last stretch runs on narrow vineyard roads that are easy to miss after dark.
Sources seen: March 2027
05 / 09
04
Awasi Atacama
San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
The gist — Separate villas stand around a single low building where the eating and the sitting are done
What is shared — One adobe building holds everything held in common: the dining room, a bar, a library corner and a hearth that is lit when the desert cools after sundown. Around it lie a courtyard, a pool and gravel walks planted with pepper trees. The desert horizon works as the outer wall of that shared ground.
What is yours — A villa is a building of its own, built of adobe and wood, with a bedroom, a bathroom and a private terrace facing the valley. Some have a small plunge pool. No villa shares a wall with another, and nothing overhead or underfoot passes from one guest to the next.
Where the line falls — Gravel underfoot is where the line falls. A short outdoor path leads from a villa door to the main house, and crossing it means moving from a building used by one party to a building used by all of them.
Settle in advance — Settle the drive from Calama in advance, because the road across the salt flats is long and mobile coverage on it is patchy.
Sources seen: March 2027
06 / 09
05
Hoshinoya Tokyo
Otemachi, Tokyo, Japan
The gist — A tower in the office district works as an inn, with the hot bath placed at the very summit
What is shared — Shoes come off at the entrance, and from that point the tower is floored for stockinged feet. A hot spring bath sits on the highest floor, open at the centre to the sky above the office blocks. Each residential floor has a lounge where tea and simple food are set out for the rooms on it.
What is yours — A room is finished in tatami, paper and dark wood, with bedding low to the floor and a deep bath of its own at the window. Storage is built into the walls, so the floor stays clear. The room is entered from a short landing shared with only a handful of neighbours.
Where the line falls — The line begins in the entrance hall, where footwear is left behind, and closes again at a sliding room door. Everything between the two, including the lifts and the floor lounges, counts as the public part of the tower.
Settle in advance — Settle your arrival in advance, as the entrance is a narrow lattice front set back among office buildings and easy to walk past.
Sources seen: March 2027
07 / 09
06
Villa Lena
Palaia, Tuscany, Italy
The gist — A farm estate holds studios and a kitchen in common and puts the sleeping in outlying buildings
What is shared — Work is the shared part. Studios, a darkroom and rehearsal space stand in converted farm buildings, and a single kitchen and dining room feed the whole estate from one table. Around them run a pool, a vegetable garden and several hundred hectares of woodland and olive terrace crossed by farm tracks.
What is yours — Sleeping is spread among apartments in the old farm buildings and rooms in the main villa. An apartment usually has its own kitchen corner, a bathroom and a door onto the hillside, so a family can withdraw from the estate entirely. Ceilings keep their beams and floors keep their brick.
Where the line falls — An unpaved track is the boundary. Each apartment opens onto it rather than onto a corridor, and walking to the kitchen or a studio means crossing open ground between one building and another, in whatever weather the hill is having.
Settle in advance — Settle the drive in advance, since the estate is reached by a gravel road that climbs several kilometres from the valley.
Sources seen: March 2027
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How to read this section
Shared and private are how we describe the plan of a building, not its rules. Everything is taken from published material and written in our own words, and the month at the end of a section is when that material was last seen.