Top 10 historic hotels

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Hotels are largely functional buildings. They tend to be shaped by the fads, fashions and demands of travellers. Like the wind tunnel which produces streamlined cars which all look similar, so this process results in homogenous hotels. In fact, most hotels are so generic, you could for the most part be anywhere in the world. These hotels buck this trend. They are beautiful buildings with fascinating history. They are fragments of a former age. While they may not have survived completely unscathed, renovations have not destroyed their spirit. These hotels have changed, but they retain a timelessness quality, not least because they are as expensive today as they were in their heyday.

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2012