The Peninsula Beverly Hills

The Peninsula Beverly Hills behaves less like a city hotel than a private estate that happens to stand at Wilshire and South Santa Monica. Tropical gardens do most of the work, softening the corner and giving the villas the air of houses rather than rooms.

The building is arranged for a day spent inside it. The Living Room takes the morning coffee and the afternoon tea, The Belvedere keeps a European brasserie, and The Roof Garden carries California produce up to the fifth floor, where the pool and its cabanas make a small resort of the roof. The accommodation runs from rooms that open onto the gardens through suites to private villas set within the planting, so the scale of a stay is a decision rather than a given. Los Angeles is outside whenever it is wanted.

Gardens in the Golden Triangle

The corner the hotel occupies is as central as Beverly Hills gets, and the planting is what makes it liveable. Palms and tropical borders hold the boulevards at a distance, the villas stand within them, and the address reads as a garden that happens to have a hotel attached. Los Angeles asks to be visited rather than absorbed, and a property with its own grounds answers that better than a tower ever could.

French doors, then villas

Deluxe Rooms open through French doors, which is rare in a city hotel and changes the temperature of a morning: Californian light comes in properly, and the outlook falls to the gardens, the fountain or the Beverly Hills skyline. Beverly Suites divide living from sleeping. Beyond them the villas sit within the planting, a more private arrangement for a family, a longer visit or anyone who prefers to arrive without an audience.

A day on the roof

The rooftop pool is the second centre of the property. Yellow and white stripes, loungers and cabanas for hire hold the fifth floor, with the city and the hills beyond the parapet. The Roof Garden cooks California produce a few steps from the water. The Belvedere keeps its European brasserie downstairs for a more formal hour, and The Living Room holds tea and the traffic of the afternoon. An entire day can pass between the three.