Setouchi Aonagi

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando has a gift for making concrete feel spiritual, and this extraordinary seven-suite retreat - perched on a mountaintop in Ehime Prefecture with the island-dotted Seto Inland Sea unfurling below - might be his most quietly thrilling project yet. Originally built as a private guesthouse, then used as a small modern art museum, the building was reimagined as a hotel under Ando's watchful eye, and his signature smooth-as-silk concrete walls, vast floor-to-ceiling windows and profoundly empty stretches of space create something closer to a meditative experience than a conventional stay. With museum-quality artwork throughout (Frank Stella in the dining room, calligrapher Rieko Kawabe in the corridors), a 30-metre infinity pool that appears to spill into the sea, and a staff whose attentiveness borders on telepathic, it's the kind of place where the frenetic activity of the mind begins to slow. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Key, and it's not hard to understand why.