From a bold lip-shaped sofa to pared-down midcentury Scandinavian designs to even a lacquered white piano and its bench adorned with decorative motifs, each room reads like a gallery, complete with wall texts describing its belongings. The lobby alone reads like a museum to contemporary seating, with a collection of chairs framed in the villa’s ornate hall. Yet the collection goes well beyond seating. True to its name, the Byblos Art Hotel is also home to an impressive array of contemporary works by artists such as Loris Cecchini, Mimmo Paladino, Pascale Marthine Tayou, and Marc Quinn, making a stay here feel less like checking into a hotel and more like living inside a museum. From $458 per night.

Opened just this year, Jnane Rumi seamlessly blends the outside with the inside: In this case, that means a century-old garden ringed by over 150 palm trees and an estate designed by the Tunisian architect Charles Boccara. The new hotel’s 11 bedrooms and common spaces blend Berber and Moorish design with pieces that give the sense that a world-traveler has just returned, with many new possessions, to their beloved home. Each space of the hotel has been meticulously adorned with the work of local craftspeople, contemporary designers, and vintage finds.

It’s a worldly mix of antique wooden desks, leather slingback chairs, beds covered in suzani textiles, woven rattan armchairs from the Tangier workshop of Rotin Ameublement, midcentury-style chairs upholstered in kuba cloth, and kilim covered floor cushions. The intoxicating mix is thanks largely to owners Gert-Jan and Corinne van den Bergh, their in-house designer, as well as the Dutch-Moroccan designer Mina Abouzahra. Abouzahra has sourced several of Jnane Rumi’s chairs and rigs from the private collection of Mustapha Blaoui, who owns a sought-after design shop in Marrakech’s medina called Tresors des Nomades. The meticulous attention to design spreads of course to the walls, where guests will find a collection of contemporary pieces by North African and European artists, curated by the Moroccan artist Samy Snoussi. From $452 per night.

ROMEO Napoli, intriguingly wedged between the sea and the southern Italian city, is known for its robust art collection displayed in the hotel as its own gallery. The collection has a vast range from ancient Japanese armor to modern works from such stalwarts as Andy Warhol and Marc Chagall. But ROMEO’s collection doesn’t just hang on the walls. It’s evident throughout the hotel and notably wherever you take a seat.

Guests can move from antique Parisian Bergère armchairs with deep plush seats and ornately curved wooden frames to sculptural Japanese wooden armchairs with a distant refined minimalism, and a variety of Hermès folding stools and footrests formed from ebonized rosewood and upholstered in the label’s bold Rouge Ash leather. There are also sleek chaise longues designed specifically for the hotel with lacquered wood frames paired wrapped in supple leather. Hallmarks of the collection include extruded aluminum lounge chairs by Italian designer and engineer Alberto Meda, an iconic metal mesh armchair by renowned Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata, and a Favela armchair from Brazilian designers Fernando and Humberto Campana, which is handcrafted from overlapping wooden slats. From $650 per night.

On the quiet north coast of the Dominican Republic, Playa Grande Beach Club is all about taking a seat, and not getting up. After all, why would you want to do anything by recline when there is a one-mile stretch of untouched Atlantic Ocean coastline within your line of sight? The hotel’s menagerie of seating options have been collected and curated throughout the years by its owners, and reflect the hotel’s overall traditional Dominican colonial architecture with a distinctly vintage Palm Beach aesthetic thrown in for good measure. Spread across the hotel’s bungalows and buildings, guests find plenty of Caribbean necessities such as hammocks, rocking chairs, and swinging daybeds as well an unexpectedly retro ‘70s sofas with giant overstuffed cushions, vintage Frankl rattan sofas, banquettes charmingly upholstered in Dutch wax print fabrics, copper barstools, tête-à-tête love seats adorned with bobbles, as well as unexpected Victorian wicker chairs. From $1,200 per night.

Once the cherished home of Italian opera and film director Franco Zeffirelli, Treville Positano is now a 16-suite hotel perched dramatically above the Tyrrhenian Sea on the Amalfi Coast. Even as a hotel in one of Italy’s most popular tourist destinations, Treville still vibrates with the spirit of its illustrious former owner, largely thanks to cherished pieces of furniture from Zeffirelli’s cultivated collection. Today, the property feels like a living museum to the world of Zeffirelli’s passions and his circle—which included such luminaries as legendary ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, opera diva Maria Callas, and conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein.

Each suite pays homage to this theatrical world, with color palettes inspired by the costumes Zeffirelli once brought to life on stage and furnished with pieces that nod to the influences of his compatriots, most notable in the Moorish pieces purchased by Zeffirelli in the 1970s that reflect his friend’s Nureyev’s fascination with Islamic design. Nowhere is this sense of enduring legacy more apparent than in the Zeffirelli Suite itself. Once the director’s own private chamber, the suite preserves many of his original belongings, including a set of opulent created mother-of-pearl furniture from Syria, including a filigree bed frame, delicately inlaid chairs, an ornate bench, and a gleaming chest of drawers. These treasured pieces, luminous and intricate, are not only the suite’s crown jewels but also enduring reminders of the maestro’s eye for beauty and drama. From $974 per night.

The AD Travel Edit

Craving an escape? From colorful carry-ons to cleverly designed packing cubes (how did we ever travel without them?), shop everything you need to make the journey in style—and as streamlined and stress-free as possible.