These swoon-worthy hotels have backdropped a slew of small and big screen triumphs, from the 2024 reboot of Mr and Mrs Smith to the revered Succession
The screen loves a hotel. Like Agatha Christie’s country houses, they provide a locked world and ready-made stage, while also capturing a wealth of powerful associations: the hotel as a refuge, as the ideal life, as a trip into the past or the future. Here, 50 Best has cherrypicked seven stunning stays where you can live out your favourite screen moments.
Juvet's landscape rooms have at least one wall entirely made from glass. (Image: Thetravelbook)
1. Juvet Landscape Hotel
As seen in: Succession
@juvetlandscapehotel
Over the course of this great American saga, we watched miserable millionaires the Roy family shuttle between a wealth of fabulous, classically luxurious locations from uptown New York to downhill Tuscany, but their fourth season visit to this future-pastoral Norwegian eco-lodge (also seen in Alex Garland’s sci-fi Ex Machina) was the outlier. Consisting of nine timber pods with a spa and a converted barn for a dining room, its aim is deep immersion in the surrounding forest: still luxury, but of a very 2020s sort, as much about what it’s not (tech, gadgets, distractions) as what it is (nature, wellness, meditation). The Roys hated it, the poor things.
Hotel Fanes' new sky pool offers panoramic views of the south Tyrolean mountains
2. Hotel Fanes
As seen in: Mr & Mrs Smith
@hotelfanes
This 2024 reboot of the iconic film takes assassin duo John and Jane Smith out of NYC for a working holiday to the Dolomites, where they’re generously put up at this timber and glass palace. Like a ski lodge on steroids, the Fanes marries the traditional Tyrolean wood-and-fur experience with modern luxe, as exemplified by the Smiths’ room, the top-end Natura Loft, which comes with private Finnish sauna. Having this on hand doesn’t stop John following his mark into the hotel’s womb-like spa complex, though disappointingly we don’t see him in the rotating Elements sauna, suspended above the ground to give views of the mountains, or in the 25-metre rooftop Sky Pool.
Grandhotel Pupp was built to reflect the Czech and Saxon halls of the 1700s
3. Grandhotel Pupp
As seen in: Casino Royale
@grandhotelpupp
The very model of 18th century Czech grandeur, the neo-baroque Pupp’s monumental white façade, deep carpets and elegant drapes made it a model for Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel. Before then, as Montenegro’s Hotel Splendide, it hosted Daniel Craig’s James Bond and saw a lot of action, from Bond and co-star Vesper Lund’s eventful check-in to a full fight scene on the fourth floor. There’s also a visit to the restaurant, where Bond and Lund dine alone in white-tablecloth formality, but sadly no time for the spa or, indeed, the hotel’s own casino.
The Dolder Grand's Masina Suite is named after Giulietta Masina, who starred in Nights of Caibiria
4. The Dolder Grand
As seen in: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
@thedoldergrand
This sleek US adaptation of the Swedish bestseller nicely positions old European locations alongside the tech wizardry, skin ink and directional hair of star hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara). For her visit to Zürich, then, it’s little wonder she checks into this hilltop castle. Built in 1899, it was a chocolate-box fantasy of towers and gables until a 2008 revamp by Norman Foster added two wings and a very 21st-century outlook. We see Salander sprawled in the top-end Masina Suite, where dark wood, glass walls, a Fendi couch and modernist chandeliers contrast with intercut scenes of her bossing the old men at a succession of Switzerland’s oldest private banks.
The Bellagio's Picasso restaurant overlooks the hotel's iconic fountains
5. The Bellagio
As seen in: Ocean’s Eleven
@bellagio
What the 1960 Rat Pack original did for old Vegas, this equally slick remake did for the new – and especially the appearance of The Bellagio. The ultra expensive resort was only a couple of years old, but George Clooney and the gang gave it a reputation for exuberant, chic excess that has lasted ever since. With access-all-areas for five weeks, the production showed us the botanical gardens, conservatory, the Gallery of Fine Art, and Julien Serrano’s Picasso restaurant, quite enough to demonstrate that this was Vegas’ new pinnacle. And that’s without the finale, shot in front of the dancing fountains that instantly became one of the US’s most famous landmarks.
Raffles Singapore's marble-clad Grand Lobby
6. Raffles Singapore
As seen in: Crazy Rich Asians
@raffleshotelsingapore
In a film that gives extremely good hotel, including the near-unfeasible rooftop pool of the three-towered Marina Bay Sands, Raffles still exerts authority among the world's greatest. This venerable institution hosts our stars Nick and Rachel in the Sarkies Suite, choice of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their last visit. A year after filming, the hotel (voted No. 17 on The World's 50 Best Hotels list) underwent a major refurb, including this suite, but you’re still guaranteed the same atmosphere of cultured calm and classic colonial architecture, and the view from the terrace over the Palm Court remains reassuringly unchanged.
Villa 20 has a private spa and 11 pools (Image: Aman Resorts)
7. Villa 20 at Amanzoe
As seen in: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
@amanzoe
Creating the money-no-object island home of reclusive billionaire Miles Bron took a fair bit of camera trickery and one truly outstanding location. The island part was furnished by Spetses, the glass dome of the title by digital effects, but the hotel itself was almost entirely the very real Amanzoe, sited on the Peloponnese peninsula in the midst of Greece’s own hideaway for the rich and famous. Incorporating six levels built into hills overlooking the Aegean, it’s a pure white mirage of marble pools, cabana and spa interspersed with modern sculpture. The perfect setting for a modern take on the Agatha Christie country-home murder mystery, in other words.
