The Victoria Falls Hotel

Built in 1904 to house engineers working on the Cape-to-Cairo railway, The Victoria Falls Hotel is one of Africa's defining addresses. Its white Edwardian wings open onto lawns aligned precisely on the second gorge of the Zambezi, so that guests take breakfast looking down an avenue of green to the Victoria Falls Bridge with the Falls' spray column rising behind. A private path leads from the garden gate to the Falls themselves in about ten minutes — an approach no other hotel can offer.

Interiors carry the full weight of the hotel's history: portrait-hung corridors, polished parquet, ceiling fans and colonnaded verandahs, refreshed in recent renovations without disturbing the Edwardian bones. Rooms in the main wings favour classic furnishings and garden or bridge views, and the famous high tea on Stanley's Terrace remains the region's great institution, spray thundering faintly beyond the lawn.

Activity options run from sunset cruises on the Zambezi to helicopter flights over the Falls, with the hotel arranging everything. Zimbabwe's tourism infrastructure around the town is well established, though travellers should note that the property trades on heritage rather than contemporary resort glamour, and vervet monkeys patrol the lawns with proprietorial confidence. As a base for one of the natural wonders of the world, it is without equal.