Grande Luxury Suite, One Bedroom, Sea View

The 1903 building at its least restrained: dark mahogany panelling, a claret silk bedspread, a violet velvet armchair set at the window, and one of the hotel's own domes on the skyline outside it. It is 121 square metres, with a separate sitting room, a butler by default, and the fair suspicion that a great deal has happened here.

Two things to know before booking. The corridors on this floor are long and the floors uneven in places — that is a building of 1903, not a fault. And the sea is the whole of the view, so in the monsoon this is a different room: magnificent, and grey.