Palaces You Can Actually Sleep In

Most of these were never meant to take guests. A maharana's lake palace, a kaiserin's castle in the Taunus, a duke's country seat outside Burgos, a sultan's Bosphorus residence — built for one family, or one office, and only opened up once keeping them as private homes stopped being practical. Parador de Granada is the strictest case: the only hotel inside the Alhambra's walls, in a 16th-century monastery built on the Nasrid sultans' own palace grounds.

A few don't fit the pattern and are here anyway, honestly labelled. The Oberoi Udaivilas is a 2002 resort built in the style of Udaipur's palaces, not a former one. Four Seasons Sultanahmet is a converted Ottoman prison, not a palace at all — the street it sits on is still named for what it used to be. Katerina Sarayı, in Kars, is a Russian-garrison-era mansion whose name nods at Catherine the Great without any real Romanov connection. Everything else on this list is the real thing: a building that used to answer to a royal household, now answering to a front desk.