Room with a View: Hotel Missoni, Edinburgh

Maggiore Room 507, Hotel Missoni Edinburgh; 44-131-220-6666; hotelmissoni.com. There are 136 rooms; doubles range from $320 to $396. Maggiore Room 507, a junior suite, ranges from $380 to $609.

There's an aspect to Edinburgh—dour, flinty, parsimonious—that fits notions of the Scottish character: Behold the 1,000-year-old Edinburgh Castle, which served as a stern warning to invaders from Edward I to the Jacobites, or that Gothic spire rising like a forbidding reinforcer of penitence. Don't be fooled. Neither the Scots nor Edinburgh are averse to the lush and the louche any longer. Walking into your room, you'll find it awash in colorful zigzag prints hand-selected by Rosita Missoni. And just outside the hotel, which sits on the corner of the George IV Bridge, is the buzz of the Royal Mile. As ever, the historic thoroughfare will be jumping with the summer's festivals, mainstream and fringe (that spire is now The Hub, a booking center for cultural events). At the end of the Mile is Holyrood Palace, the queen's official Scottish residence. But her rooms, you can be sure, don't come with a taste of la dolce vita.