Boscolo Hotel Aleph, Rome, Italy

This design hotel in Rome, Hotel Boscolo Aleph, was formerly a bank, and feels rather like a space age brothel, or the place to come to explain yourself to a higher being - dim red lighting, vast chinese-style warriors like Cerberus's guarding the entrance to hell, with staff black-clad and padding silently about.

The facilities

It is all quite deliberate too - Aleph is 'Alpha' according to the design hotel blurb, while the themed décor of the hotel follows the journey of Dante (sort-of) from hell (the Chinese warriors and the red ground floor) to purgatory (the 6th floor restaurant) and finally paradise - yes, you've guessed it, the spa.

The rooms

As for the 96 rooms at this design hotel, they are somewhere in between - kitted out with ebony wood, black marble floors, red lights and glass, and large black and white images on the wood effect walls. A top floor suite has a deck and outside jacuzzi - heaven or hell? - though with no particular views, as with the large decked roof terrace open to all. The design hotel also offers 'a reading-room with no books, yet capable of offering you the pages of your favourite writers virtually, enwrapped in the sweetness of the sound of silence.' Mmm...