12/12/2025
Whether originally designed by the Swedish royal courts or meant as a refuge for female outcasts, these buildings have undergone historically respectful conversion that still speak volumes of characters long gone.
Discover the best hotel conversions, as recognised by our Hotel Awards 2025:
🔸Runner-up: Anna & Bel, US — Formerly an asylum for ‘indigent widows and single women’, this imposing 18th-century red-brick property has metamorphosed into one of Philadelphia’s most stylish boutique hotels in Fishtown.
🔸Runner-up: Ran Baas, The Palace, India — This snow-white wonder in Patiala’s 18th-century royal palace complex, Qila Mubarak, takes you back to the age of India’s last maharajas, functioning as Punjab’s first luxury hotel.
🔸Winner: Stockholm Stadshotell, Sweden — After a four-year renovation, this grand 19th-century building has kept the vaulted ceiling, in-set columns and tall arched windows from its first charitable incarnation. No two of the 32 rooms and suites are alike, but all are regally serene places fit for kings and queens.
🔗To discover all categories, click here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/best-hotels-in-the-world-hotel-awards-2025
