Jade Mountain

Jade Mountain is what happens when an architect owns the hotel and answers to nobody. Nick Troubetzkoy's creation, rising on a ridge above Anse Chastanet on St Lucia's southwestern coast, dispenses with corridors in favour of open bridges, dispenses with room numbers in favour of 'sanctuaries', and—most famously—dispenses with the fourth wall entirely. Each sanctuary opens across its full width to a framed panorama of the twin Piton peaks and the Caribbean Sea, with a private infinity pool running to the edge where a wall would ordinarily be.

The experience is deliberately elemental. There are no televisions and no glass between guest and view; tropical air, birdsong and the colour-shifted pools—each tiled differently—do the entertaining. Major-domos handle every arrangement, and the celestial rooftop terrace turns the architecture toward the stars after dark. The resort is adults-oriented and unabashedly built for romance; it is consistently ranked among the Caribbean's most spectacular honeymoon addresses for good reason.

Below, the sister resort Anse Chastanet supplies two beaches, some of the island's best reef snorkelling and jungle-biking trails, while Jade Mountain's own restaurant works with produce from the estate's organic farm and cacao plantation, including chocolate made on site. The Pitons' hiking, Soufrière's sulphur springs and the marine reserve fill the days. Nowhere else in the Caribbean turns a view into architecture so completely.