Four summer retreats you’ll long to return to

“Storybook” hospitality from a homewares specialist

Audrey Gelman founded her Brooklyn homewares shop Six Bells with an eye to furnishing locals with everything they need to bring countryside warmth to city spaces, whether pottery from Kilkenny or hand-stitched Deep South-style quilts. “Cosy” would appear to be the organising principle behind the aesthetic – one that Gelman has now extended into hospitality. The Six Bells Countryside Inn is her old-world take on hosting in the New York countryside – 11 individually designed rooms and a “tavern”, The Feathers, in a listed Federal-era building on Main Street in the mid-Hudson Valley town of Rosendale. Consulting chef Molly Levine logged a stint at Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse and at Anthony Champalimaud’s Troutbeck estate in nearby Amenia, before opening her own Hudson Valley food destination, Westerly Canteen.

At The Six Bells the quaintness quotient is high, from the room names (“Mildred’s Plum”; “Scrubett’s Ledge”) to the decorative painting and passementerie. “A storybook you can sleep in” is how Gelman describes it; if early reports are anything to go by, she seems well poised to transpose the goodwill she enjoys down in Brooklyn to her new upstate Arcadia.

Belmond’s new belle époque prize

If your fantasies lean to the sepia-toned glamour of early-20th-century dolce vita, the team at Belmond’s Hotel Splendido in Portofino has you covered. The hotel – itself newly sparkling from its attic suites to its poolside restaurant, courtesy of a total makeover by Martin Brudnizki – has acquired the five-bedroom Villa Beatrice, a turreted folly with an exceedingly picturesque situation on the outcropping at the easternmost edge of Portofino town, with views up and down the Ligurian coast.

Here, too, Brudnizki has seen to the historic interiors, layering shades of lemon, pistachio and sky blue into whitewashed and high-ceilinged spaces. Ten people sleep very comfortably indeed across its three storeys, and it comes fully staffed, with access to speedboats, personal chefs and the hotel spa.

Be her guest on the Costa del Sol

Menorca was the quieter Balearic until Iwan and Manuela Wirth rocked up to morph its harbour into one of the Mediterranean’s premier cultural destinations. Among the cognoscenti’s favourite places to stay here is Cristine Bedfor Mahón – a true guest house whose living spaces, suites and seemingly endless nooks and terraces radiate the style of its owner, Cristina Lozano. Regulars grab a book, wander into the kitchen to talk to chef Pau Sintes, help themselves to a drink, or visit local artisans and cafés confident in the warm welcome that her introduction ensures.

Lozano has opened a second hotel in Málaga, on Granada Street in the heart of the old town’s Muslim barreras and guild artisans. As in Mahón there are few rooms and even fewer airs; these take a more ebullient turn thanks to the participation of rising Spanish design star Marta de la Rica. She lets loose with colour and ornament, pulling inspiration from the Costa del Sol palette and layering in the art and textiles. Lozano already has a small roster of local producers and fellow hosts, from sandal makers to corner cafés, lined up for her guests.

An imperial good time in the City of Lights

For 100 years Le Bristol has been satisfying hospitality fantasies. From presaging turn-down needs to organising private visits (after-hours museums one day, a hands-on artisan experience at Paris’s oldest bronzier atelier the next) the original Palace hotel never stops bringing its A-game. To wit: the new Suite Impériale, a one-bedroom appartement that has to be one of the city’s most extravagant stays.

Swaths of dupioni silk, custom De Gournay wall coverings, epoch-accurate antiques and hits of gilt contrast with the George Condos hanging in the bedroom and corridor (the artist, a frequent hotel guest, collaborated on the suite’s design). The lush finishes never go over the top; Le Bristol lets the square metreage – 320 – take care of the wow factor. How the hotel hosted it when the suite launched a few weeks ago? A grown-up’s-night-in theme: shoes kicked off, R&B on the sound system, mini club sandwiches – and a tarot reader.

@mariashollenbarger