With a perfect location score, the property comprises four buildings in a fishing village on the Estoril Coast. "The setting is just magnificent." The White Building has a natural solarium, while the Italian-style Palace Building is designed with columns facing the sea. Decorated in light colors, rooms are "in tune with the surroundings." The bar is the spot for a drink at sunset.

(60 rooms)

This 18th-century mini-palace was once home to famous local novelist Eça de Queirós, and you can easily imagine courting the muse as you wander through the public rooms here. Recline on squashy velvet sofas in the wood-paneled library with its glass-doored bookcases, peer through a brass telescope framed by swagged heavy brocade drapery, or even pick out a mazurka on the piano. The 29 bedrooms, lit by sconces, have French ticking bedspreads, mahogany headboards, and marble bathrooms. There's also a cute courtyard where breakfast is served. There's no restaurant, but here in the old town by the Museu de Arte Antiga and the Docas there are plenty of places to choose from.

The May 2005 debut of the Bairro Alto, Lisbon's first true boutique hotel, was a telling sign that the city had become a style center in its own right. Fittingly overlooking Camões Square at the precise point where the bohemian Bairro Alto neighborhood meets the trendy Chiado shopping district, the converted 18th-century mansion doesn't entirely abandon tradition; the facade is a classic bright-yellow, while the terrazzo floor in the lobby is inlaid with a marble globe referencing Portugal's epic age of exploration. But the real local buzz focuses on the hotel's embrace of the modern. The street-level Portuguese-contemporary restaurant and the airy bar overlooking the square have become clubhouse central for Lisbon's scene-makers. The sleek sensibility continues upstairs, in the 55 bedrooms that shrink in size on top floors but never feel too cramped, thanks to their brightly colored paneled walls (variously painted white, yellow, red, and blue), tailored leather headboards, and slim walnut desks that convert into dressing tables by way of flip-up mirrors. The most unexpected, whimsical touch is the naturalist cameo of songbirds painted on each guest room wall. But the Bairro Alto's best feature is an open-air rooftop café where you can curl up on wicker sofas, eat a smoked salmon sandwich, and gaze out over Lisbon's red-tiled roofs to the Tagus River.

Lisbon's Four Seasons may come as a surprise to the chain's fans. The ten-story, 1959 marble cube of a building, crowning one of Lisbon's seven hills, looks like a version of Eastern Bloc architecture at its most block-headed, and the swish 1950s interior doesn't conform to any accepted rendition of contempo chic. But anyone who appreciates genuinely quirky retro will lap up the Jean Cocteau meets Jackie O. glamour, starting with 282 epic-sized guestrooms that flaunt a dizzying mix of luxe references (everything from Louis XVI to a dash of Deco, swagged curtains to heated towel racks). The hotel really comes into its own, though, in the sweeping public lounges that double as galleries of Portuguese Modernist art; among the most eye-popping pieces are the neon-colored, Picasso-like tapestries of centauros by José de Almada Negreiros. Less of an acquired taste, especially in a city where service can seriously flag, is the impeccably efficient staff and an intrepid concierge desk that will do anything legal to snag that dinner reservation. Other big pluses: a new, state-of-the-art multi-sensory spa (try the nectar and papaya wrap for a fruity, organic glow) and the Varanda Restaurant's snaking lunch buffet, where you can sample every classic egg-based Portuguese convent dessert while watching the local power brokers make deals.

Though he's the man behind the louche looks of Paris's Buddha Bar and London's Strictly Hush, Portuguese architect Miguel Câncio Martins has copped a luxuriously Lusitanian appearance for this 42-room hotel, which overlooks the sculpture-dotted Avenida Liberdade. Even the elevator has a stone mosaic floor reprising the sidewalks out front. Rooms, which are larger and quieter than those at the Bairro Alto Hotel ("Hot List," May 2006), have rich-looking eucalyptus parquet floors and wainscoting of azuelos, Portugal's traditional painted tiles. Limed wood paneling, ostrich skin headboards, and cut velvet and chintzes put a spin of contemporary chic on local tradition. There's also a charming mezzanine library with books in several languages, and breakfast is served in the armchair-filled lobby lounge, which includes antique mahogany cabinets used by the herbalists who occupied the building during the eighteenth century.

The pink palace set high on a hill in its own gardens—the chosen lodgings of President Bush, Sting, and Cher—remains as extraordinary as ever thanks to good management (it's in the Orient-Express stable) and recent refurbishments. Of the 109 rooms, you really have to get one of the Palace Rooms for the full 18th-century experience. Those in the new modern Garden Wing and the more period-appropriate Villa Lapa lack that je ne sais quoi. If your bonus came in big, secure the new Tower Room, #701—it has not only a private terrace but also a walkway to a second one, an octagonal tower-top perch just big enough for breakfast. However, room service breakfast means you'd miss out on one of the most lavish morning buffets in Christendom—complete with Champagne on ice. Ristorante Hotel Cipriani is elegance personified, with Murano chandeliers and ceiling murals, and serves "grown-up" cuisine, such as fillet of beef sautéed with lemon confit and rosemary, artichoke with foie gras. Amenities are all you'd expect, with an outdoor pool in the grounds and an indoor one in the La Prairie (and MAC makeup) spa, with sauna, steam, and gym. Kids are well catered for too, with babysitting service and a playground. Last but not least, this hotel has its own fragrance, the 140-year-old mandarin-violet-cedar Agua de Portugal, legacy of King Louis I's bride, Princess Maria Pia of Savoy.

The "perfect grounds and grand architecture" at this late-nineteenth-century palace "outside the city center" make it "look as if royalty might still be living there." Two modern wings connect to the main building via bridges. Louis XVI rooms have wooden floors and high ceilings. Regency-style Valle Flôr serves local dishes like bacalhau com natas (salt cod with cream).

(190 rooms)

The French hotel chain has redone its Lisbon property top to bottom, and the result is a hybrid of Gallic savoir faire and Portuguese flavor. The decor of dark woods with ocher and red accents distills the country's visual idiom, and Chinese porcelain (it was the Portuguese, of course, who opened up trade to India and China) and framed silhouettes of Portuguese subjects by local artists give the 171-room property an intensely local feel. Spacious rooms, with beds you want to dive into, are quiet despite the hotel's location on the central Avenida da Liberdade, a short imperial boulevard with mosaic sidewalks. Ad Lib, the Franco-Portuguese restaurant, is popular with locals.