Imperial Hotel Tokyo

Few hotels anywhere carry as much institutional weight as the Imperial. Founded in 1890 at the government's urging to host foreign dignitaries, it has stood beside Hibiya Park through every chapter of modern Japanese history, and its most famous incarnation—Frank Lloyd Wright's Mayan-inflected masterpiece—survived the Great Kanto earthquake on the very day of its opening banquet in 1923. Today's high-rise replaced it decades ago, but the Old Imperial Bar still incorporates original Wright brickwork and terracotta, a pilgrimage site for architecture lovers.

The current hotel is vast and unashamedly traditional, run with a formality that has become its own attraction. Uniformed staff execute a style of old-school Japanese hospitality—precise, discreet, unhurried—that newer international flagships imitate but rarely equal. Rooms in the main building are classically appointed, while the tower wing offers larger, more contemporary quarters; the best face the park and the Imperial Palace beyond.

Dining reflects a century of occasion-making, from the venerable French restaurant Les Saisons to teppanyaki, sushi and one of Tokyo's most famous buffets at the Imperial Viking Sal, the restaurant that introduced the buffet concept to Japan. A long-planned rebuilding programme will eventually renew the site again, which only adds reason to experience this institution in its present form.