The great hotels of the past were acts of civic ambition dressed as commercial enterprise. The Savoy, the Ritz, the Grand Hotel Pupp in Carlsbad — these buildings were palaces built for those who did not own palaces, stages on which the theatre of social aspiration could be performed with maximum elegance.

"A hotel should make you feel as though the world has been reorganised around your comfort."

Today's most ambitious hotel projects are working in this tradition, but with new tools and new ideas about what hospitality can mean. In rural Portugal, a Pritzker Prize-winning architect has constructed a cluster of monolithic concrete structures that sit in the landscape with the stillness of ancient ruins.