A seat is never just a seat. Across the globe, discerning hotels are filling their spaces with settees, divans, sofas, and armchairs that stretch beyond the merely functional and into the realm of art—some even center their whole design scheme around the seating arrangements. From a Houston mansion layered with rare antique chairs, to a Renaissance villa outside Florence that showcases a collection acquired across decades, to a Caribbean retreat brimming with vintage rattan and swinging daybeds, these properties invite guests not only to sit, but to linger—where chair and cushion unfurls a story of history, design, and intrigue.
The Marlene has a history nearly as expansive as Texas itself. Built in 1910 for a New Orleans businessman and designed by renowned Houston architect George H. Fruehling, the neoclassical mansion in the city’s Avondale East neighborhood has passed through many private owners while leaving its mark on the state’s antiques legacy. In the mid-20th century, Clavy and Jessie Matthews moved their business, Caroline Antiques, into the house, transforming it into one of Texas’s must-visit antiques destinations and helping spark the creation of the Houston Antiques Show. The property has returned to antique-loving hands through Lily Barfield, founder of the cult-favorite Instagram shop Lily’s Vintage Finds. Barfield opened the mansion as a boutique hotel this past June, ushering in a new chapter for the storied residence.
The Marlene’s nine guest rooms are meticulously curated with treasures Barfield has sourced on her European travels. Nearly every one of the Marlene’s seats is antique or vintage, and wandering the hotel’s rooms feels like moving through a living archive—chairs saved from a historic Belgian hotel and a 10-foot wooden bench from a French château now anchor the Marlene’s Garden Room and Madonna Bar. Restored French iron garden chairs, upholstered in Brunschwig & Fils fabric, are the centerpiece of the hotel’s sunroom, and in the lobby, guests are greeted by armchairs discovered at Lyon’s famed Les Puces du Canal. Each guest room is anchored by a standout piece, whether an antique settee reupholstered in Mallorcan Ikat by Lee Jofa x Sarah Bartholomew, a slipper chair reupholstered in new fabric yet still trimmed in its original 100-year-old bullion fringe, or more character-rich pieces gathered from France’s most storied flea markets. From $290 per night.
In the hills of Fiesole, overlooking Florence, Il Salviatino is a Renaissance masterpiece. Although its sweeping views of the city, and Italianate gardens filled with roses and lemons, can take your breath away, it’s the palace-turned-hotel’s interiors that are worthy of the admiration. Indeed, the building has a long history of sumptuous interiors. The home’s 16th-century owners, the noble Salviatino family, transformed what was previously a more modest 14th-century estate, with ornate furnishings and frescoes.
For the last several years Il Salviatino, so named for its interior-wise owners, has been under the care of Alessandra Rovati, Milan-based florist and event designer behind the celebrated studio Tearose. Rovati, who quietly opened the hotel in the pandemic days, has brought life back to life to the now 39-room boutique hotel, furnishing it with her own eclectic collection of furniture which she’s collected throughout the decades. She’s adorned the villa with the heady mix of her treasures: dining chairs from an auction of the Ritz Paris, vintage chesterfield sofas discovered in the palazzo upon purchase and which Rovati has reupholstered seasonally, Gio Ponti chairs, Mario Bellini and Willy Rizzo sofas, 1970s Italian accent chairs, and even custom designs she conceived and had fabricated in Milan. True to the spirit of a private home, Il Salviatino’s furniture and objet d’art shift locations, moving from one shelf or one room continuously, in a gesture that feels at once homey and theatrical. From $815 per night.
“In fair Verona, where we lay our scene” may be the opening of Romeo and Juliet, but it’s also a line worthy of introducing Byblos Art Hotel. The building, of which sections date as far back to the 16th-century designs of Michele Sanmicheli—one of the great Veronese masters of the Renaissance—contains one of the largest private collections of art and design in all of Italy. Its assortment of chairs alone feels worthy of a Shakespearean subplot, whether comedy or tragedy is for the guest to decide. Across 56 uniquely designed rooms by Italian designer Alessandro Mendini, seating in the hotel acts almost like sculptures and guests will find pieces by not only by Mendini, but Beatriz Millar, Begonia Montalban, Philippe Starck, and Ron Arad.
From a bold lip-shaped sofa to pared-down midcentury Scandinavian designs to even a lacquered white piano and its bench adorned with decorative motifs, each room reads like a gallery, complete with wall texts describing its belongings. The lobby alone reads like a museum to contemporary seating, with a collection of chairs framed in the villa’s ornate hall. Yet the collection goes well beyond seating. True to its name, the Byblos Art Hotel is also home to an impressive array of contemporary works by artists such as Loris Cecchini, Mimmo Paladino, Pascale Marthine Tayou, and Marc Quinn, making a stay here feel less like checking into a hotel and more like living inside a museum. From $458 per night.
Opened just this year, Jnane Rumi seamlessly blends the outside with the inside: In this case, that means a century-old garden ringed by over 150 palm trees and an estate designed by the Tunisian architect Charles Boccara. The new hotel’s 12 bedrooms and common spaces blend Berber and Moorish design with pieces that give the sense that a world-traveler has just returned, with many new possessions, to their beloved home. Each space of the hotel has been meticulously adorned with the work of local craftspeople, contemporary designers, and vintage finds.
It’s a worldly mix of antique wooden desks, leather slingback chairs, beds covered in suzani textiles, woven rattan armchairs from the Tangier workshop of Rotin Ameublement, midcentury-style chairs upholstered in kuba cloth, and kilim covered floor cushions. The intoxicating mix is thanks largely to owners Gert-Jan and Corinne van den Bergh, their in-house team, as well as the Dutch-Moroccan designer Mina Abouzahra. Abouzahra has sourced several of Jnane Rumi’s chairs and rigs from the private collection of Mustapha Blaoui, who owns a sought-after design shop in Marrakech’s medina called Tresors des Nomades. The meticulous attention to design spreads of course to the walls, where guests will find a collection of contemporary pieces by North African and European artists, curated by the Moroccan artist Samy Snoussi. From $452 per night.
ROMEO Napoli, intriguingly wedged between the sea and the southern Italian city, is known for its robust art collection displayed in the hotel as its own gallery. The collection has a vast range from ancient Japanese armor to modern works from such stalwarts as Andy Warhol and Marc Chagall. But ROMEO’s collection doesn’t just hang on the walls. It’s evident throughout the hotel and notably wherever you take a seat.
Guests can move from antique Parisian Bergère armchairs with deep plush seats and ornately curved wooden frames to sculptural Japanese wooden armchairs with a distant refined minimalism, and a variety of Hermès folding stools and footrests formed from ebonized rosewood and upholstered in the label’s bold Rouge Ash leather. There are also sleek chaise longues designed specifically for the hotel with lacquered wood frames paired wrapped in supple leather. Hallmarks of the collection include extruded aluminum lounge chairs by Italian designer and engineer Alberto Meda, an iconic metal mesh armchair by renowned Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata, and a Favela armchair from Brazilian designers Fernando and Humberto Campana, which is handcrafted from overlapping wooden slats. From $650 per night.
On the quiet north coast of the Dominican Republic, Playa Grande Beach Club is all about taking a seat, and not getting up. After all, why would you want to do anything by recline when there is a one-mile stretch of untouched Atlantic Ocean coastline within your line of sight? The hotel’s menagerie of seating options have been collected and curated throughout the years by its owners, and reflect the hotel’s overall traditional Dominican colonial architecture with a distinctly vintage Palm Beach aesthetic thrown in for good measure. Spread across the hotel’s bungalows and buildings, guests find plenty of Caribbean necessities such as hammocks, rocking chairs, and swinging daybeds as well an unexpectedly retro ‘70s sofas with giant overstuffed cushions, vintage Frankl rattan sofas, banquettes charmingly upholstered in Dutch wax print fabrics, copper barstools, tête-à-tête love seats adorned with bobbles, as well as unexpected Victorian wicker chairs. From $1,200 per night.
Once the cherished home of Italian opera and film director Franco Zeffirelli, Treville Positano is now a 16-suite hotel perched dramatically above the Tyrrhenian Sea on the Amalfi Coast. Even as a hotel in one of Italy’s most popular tourist destinations, Treville still vibrates with the spirit of its illustrious former owner, largely thanks to cherished pieces of furniture from Zeffirelli’s cultivated collection. Today, the property feels like a living museum to the world of Zeffirelli’s passions and his circle—which included such luminaries as legendary ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, opera diva Maria Callas, and conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein.
Each suite pays homage to this theatrical world, with color palettes inspired by the costumes Zeffirelli once brought to life on stage and furnished with pieces that nod to the influences of his compatriots, most notable in the Moorish pieces purchased by Zeffirelli in the 1970s that reflect his friend’s Nureyev’s fascination with Islamic design. Nowhere is this sense of enduring legacy more apparent than in the Zeffirelli Suite itself. Once the director’s own private chamber, the suite preserves many of his original belongings, including a set of opulent created mother-of-pearl furniture from Syria, including a filigree bed frame, delicately inlaid chairs, an ornate bench, and a gleaming chest of drawers. These treasured pieces, luminous and intricate, are not only the suite’s crown jewels but also enduring reminders of the maestro’s eye for beauty and drama. From $974 per night.
Craving an escape? From colorful carry-ons to cleverly designed packing cubes (how did we ever travel without them?), shop everything you need to make the journey in style—and as streamlined and stress-free as possible.
