Art Hotels

Hotel Fox stands a few steps from Copenhagen's City Hall Square, in the thick of the city centre.

Its rooms were given over to artists. A group of illustrators, graphic designers and street artists from several countries each took a handful of rooms and did as they liked. The results run from fairy tale to comic strip to pure pattern.

Booking one means accepting a surprise. No two rooms look alike, and that is the whole appeal. Tivoli Gardens and Strøget are both a short walk away.

The Pelirocco occupies a Regency terrace on a square just back from Brighton's seafront.

Every room follows its own theme. Music, film and pop culture set the tone, and artists, designers and collaborators shaped the individual rooms. Some are playful, some are loud, and a few are quietly elegant.

It suits the town. Brighton has long been a home for artists and performers, and the hotel carries that spirit indoors. The pier and the Lanes are close by.

Castello di Ama is a wine estate in the Chianti hills near Gaiole, built around a small medieval hamlet. A handful of guest suites sit within its historic villas.

Since 2000 the estate has invited artists to make works for a specific place on the property. Michelangelo Pistoletto, Anish Kapoor and Louise Bourgeois are among them. Pieces turn up in a chapel, a cellar, a garden wall.

A stay combines two things. There is wine, grown and made on the spot, and there is a slow walk through art that could exist nowhere else.