New darling on the block

Stylish city hotels for elegant travellers, featuring a Milanese design icon, a New York sanctuary and our favourite Parisian hideaways

Those in the know are booking ‘shoulder season’ trips to places where the sun still shines, the heat is bearable, prices are lower and the crowds have gone. Here are our top five

Lydia Slater writes a love letter to Le Bristol on the occasion of its 100th anniversary

There’s nothing expected or dull about this Parisian apartment, whose design takes risks by mixing references with studied panache

A multicultural bastion of Modernisme architecture, loomed over by an imposing medieval citadel, this tiny slice of Spanish flair on the North African coast deserves far more of a spotlight, writes Eddi Fiegel

Catherine Fairweather finds a dream-like world of old-school glamour aboard the new Orient Express journey from Rome to Venice, where ancient ruins melt into rolling Italian landscapes steeped in Renaissance romance