In 2009 Manuela and Iwan Wirth – arguably essentially the most influential contemporary-art sellers in the world in the present day – remodeled Durslade Farm, a working farm close to Bruton, Somerset, right into a wildly profitable gallery-guesthouse-restaurant combo. Mud, manure, macrobiotics and masterpieces. Ten years later they put the same sort of lightning in a distinct form of bottle on the different finish of the nation, in the Scottish Highlands, with the Fife Arms, a former looking lodge in Braemar, not removed from Balmoral Castle.
Balmoral was the popular rural hideout of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Together they kind of invented the tartan-clad, caber-tossing, shortbread-tin model of Scottishness that almost all of us as of late settle for as historic reality. The Fife Arms takes this quaint fantasy, spikes its whisky with acid, electrifies the bagpipes and dials them as much as 11.
It could be tough to overstate the strangeness of the place or the sense of childlike marvel to which it offers rise. Scotland has some nice hotels however the Fife Arms is one thing else. For now, at the least, it’s in a class all its personal.
Address: Mar Road, Braemar, Ballater AB35 5YN
Price: From about $812 per night time