The Grand Hotel Taipei

Visible from across the city, The Grand Hotel rises above Yuanshan like a transplanted imperial palace: fourteen storeys of vermilion columns, golden roof tiles and dragon ornament, completed in its present form in 1973 and long counted among the tallest classical Chinese-style buildings anywhere. Founded in the early 1950s to host visiting dignitaries when Taipei had nowhere suitable, it has received presidents and royalty for seven decades and occupies a singular place in Taiwanese memory.

The interiors deliver on the exterior's promise—a lobby of red pillars and coffered ceilings, plum-blossom motifs worked into the details, and long corridors hung with historical photographs. The famous secret slide tunnels, built as escape routes during a tenser era and now partially open to guided tours, add a layer of Cold War intrigue few hotels can match. Rooms are traditional in style and comfortable rather than cutting-edge, the best opening onto deep balconies with views over the Keelung River towards the city.

Cantonese and Jiangsu-Zhejiang dining rooms, a swimming pool terrace and gardens laced with walking trails on the hillside round out the estate. Luxury purists will find slicker service downtown, but nowhere else offers this architecture, this history or breakfast beneath dragon-painted eaves. As a cultural landmark that happens to take guests, it is irresistible.