Aria Hotel, Prague, Czech Republic

There is much to like about this elegant and professional boutique hotel. Hotel Aria is themed, in a fairly understated way, around music – very apt for Prague. Each floor is dedicated to a different genre (contemporary, classical, opera and jazz) and each room to a different composer, singer or band.

The facilities

The glass-covered atrium lobby extends through most of the ground floor restaurant-café-bar, so it’s very light and airy. There’s a baby grand piano ready to be played and a fountain tinkling in the background.

The music library is stocked with 3,000 CDs (and an excellent collection of DVDs.) Go and pick what you want to listen to and then spend a few hours in the Music Box, a tiny room stuffed with fantastic musical technology. It’s sound-proofed, so you can test the speakers as much as you want. If you prefer it, you can borrow the portable Bose headphones and listen to music in the jewel-like, rich red Music Salon, with its shelves of books and fireplace. On sunny days, go up to the lovely roof terrace, which has a perfect rooftop view.

The rooms

Upstairs at the Aria Hotel, walls are decorated with black-and-white caricatures of musicians. If you can, pick a room with a view of the beautiful little Baroque garden at the back of the boutique hotel and the park beyond it.

Each of the 52 rooms has a biography of the musician it is dedicated to and is computer wired for sound and loaded up with lots of their music. Rooms are beautifully done, absolutely spick and span with Frette linens and lots of goodies in the bathrooms.

Phones are cordless, so you can summon room service from anywhere in the boutique hotel. For a treat, book the Smetana suite, an open-plan studio-style room under sloping, wood-beamed ceilings. Unless, of course, you can’t bear his music.