COMO The Treasury

For more than a century Perth's State Buildings—once home to the colonial Treasury, land titles office and post office—stood grand but underused at the corner of St Georges Terrace. COMO's 2015 conversion returned them to the centre of city life, threading 48 rooms through the Victorian-era shell while leaving the arched loggias, pressed-metal ceilings and stone staircases intact. The result feels less like a hotel inserted into a landmark than a landmark that happens to take guests.

Rooms are among the most generous in Australia, many with four-metre ceilings, freestanding baths set by full-height sash windows, and a palette of soft creams and pale timber that lets the architecture speak. The wider State Buildings complex brings restaurants, a wine merchant and coffee roaster under the same roofline, so the ground floor hums with locals rather than lobby traffic—a rare quality in a five-star property.

Dining is a genuine draw: Wildflower, in a glass pavilion on the rooftop, builds its menus around the six seasons of the Noongar calendar and Western Australian produce, while Post occupies the old postal hall below. A COMO Shambhala treatment suite and an indoor pool tucked into the rooftop complete a hotel that gives Perth a claim to one of the country's finest city addresses.