Japan's Art Museum Turned Hotel

[David Paul Appell]

Some hotels and resorts throughout the world make a big deal out of their collections of painting and sculpture. But leave it to the Japanese to go all the way and actually build a hotel around an art museum. The wee island of Naoshima, in Japan's Inland Sea off the Honshu coast between Osaka and Hiroshima, has gotten quite the elegant little rep in recent years for its modern art museums, of all things, thanks to a local textbook publisher called Benesse. That includes the Chichu Art Museum, the Art House Project, and Benesse House, a four-building complex designed by Pritzker winner Tadao Ando, mixing gallery space and outdoor installations with eateries, a spa, a shop, a monorail, and 49 guestrooms.

And if you know anything about contemporary art, the works are some pretty top-tier stuff from some pretty heavy hitters, like Yoshihiro Suda, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Frank Stella, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Richard Long, and David Tremlett. And it's not just public areas that are tarted up -- each room contains at least one original artwork (for example, if you're a Keith Haring fan, book room 401 in the dramatic hilltop Oval building, where you can gaze to your heart's content upon two of his works, Untitled and Free South Africa). The rates aren't exactly starving-artist territory, so if you find them a mite steep (from ¥34,650/US$380/CA$395/£260), you can always hop the ferry over and have a peep around; you can see most of the galleries without an overnight stay, plus get stoned and aromatherapized in the spa and chow down on Japanese and Western cuisine.