The Best Rooftops and Terraces With a View

A view is the cheapest luxury there is, and the best ones are rarely sold as rooftop bars. These are places where the roof or the terrace is the reason to come, from medinas where the city happens on the rooftops to hotels built for the view in front of them.

Morocco does it best, because in a medina the roofs are where the space is. Dar Roumana, in a converted 17th-century palace in Fes el-Bali, serves dinner on a candlelit roof looking across the medina to the hills. In Marrakech, Henna Art Café is a roof terrace and small garden above the souk, a few minutes from Jemaa el-Fna but far enough from it to hear yourself think, with henna done by hand. Umia, near Essaouira's ramparts, is one of the few roofs in town where the food matches the Atlantic view.

Two are at the top of buildings that don't look like they'd have one. La Guarida in Havana is reached up a half-ruined marble staircase, with a bar at the very top. In Budapest, Instant-Fogas puts a roof terrace above seven-plus rooms of ruin bar; across the river, Rudas pairs its 16th-century Ottoman bath with a modern rooftop pool looking over the Danube.

The rest are terraces with a view the building was put there for. Les Maisons de Cappadoce serves breakfast looking out over Pigeon Valley and back at Uçhisar's castle. The Parador de Granada, a former monastery inside the Alhambra's walls, has a terrace over the Generalife gardens and the Sierra Nevada beyond. The Parador de Carmona looks out over the Carmona plain from the site of its old fortress. And The Feathered Nest, a Cotswolds inn, has a terrace looking straight down the valley — open to non-residents for a drink.