The Peninsula Shanghai

When The Peninsula opened on the Bund in 2009, it was the first new construction on Shanghai's most famous waterfront in decades, and the brief was audacious: build a modern hotel that could stand beside the Art Deco monuments of the 1920s without pastiche. The result largely succeeds—a dignified stone-clad block at the northern end of the Bund, beside the former British Consulate gardens, whose interiors run with the jazz-age theme through nickel-trimmed lifts, lacquer screens and a colonnaded lobby made for afternoon tea.

Rooms are quintessential Peninsula: enormous by Shanghai standards, technologically fastidious, with dressing rooms, deep tubs and—on the river side—show-stopping views across the Huangpu to Pudong's neon skyline. The in-house Rolls-Royce fleet and a general air of unhurried competence complete the effect of stepping into a better-organised era.

Sir Elly's, the rooftop restaurant and terrace named for Sir Elly Kadoorie, serves refined European cooking with one of the great skyline panoramas in Asia, while Yi Long Court's Cantonese cuisine has held Michelin recognition for years. The subterranean pool, styled like a private 1930s club, may be the most handsome in China. The old town, the former French Concession and the Bund promenade are all immediately at hand.