The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel

The Carlyle has never needed to advertise. Since 1930 the slender Art Deco tower at Madison Avenue and 76th Street has traded on discretion, drawing presidents, royalty and film stars who valued a hotel that behaved like a private residence. John F. Kennedy kept an apartment here, and the roll call of famous guests since is long precisely because the hotel has never discussed it. The Upper East Side setting—gallery-lined Madison Avenue below, Central Park a block west—remains one of Manhattan's most civilised.

Interiors carry the personality of a collector's townhouse rather than a corporate flagship: black-and-white marble, English prints, individually decorated rooms and suites, some with pantries and park views that residents guard jealously. Rosewood's stewardship has refreshed the fabric without flattening the eccentricity, and the elevator operators and long-tenured staff give the place a continuity that new hotels cannot buy.

The nightlife is the legend. Bemelmans Bar, wrapped in Ludwig Bemelmans' whimsical painted murals of Central Park, is arguably New York's most romantic room for a cocktail, while Café Carlyle has hosted cabaret royalty from Bobby Short onwards and still stages some of the city's most intimate performances. Few hotels anywhere offer an evening this complete without stepping outside.