Hotel Fasano São Paulo

Character and identity

Set in Jardins, Hotel Fasano is the founding property of a fourth-generation Italian-Brazilian restaurant dynasty that has been feeding São Paulo since 1902. The brick façade (the bricks shipped from England) opens not onto a reception desk but onto the Lobby Bar, where leather armchairs, dark woods, travertine and antique fixtures channel a 1930s register. A penthouse spa, a compact indoor pool flanked by Hans Wegner chairs, and the eponymous Fasano restaurant anchor the experience, the latter pouring from a wine list curated by sommelier Manoel Beato and one of the city's deepest single-malt collections.

Who's it for

Bottom line

The draw here is the restaurant-and-bar culture: this is a hotelier-restaurateur's hotel first, and the Lobby Bar, Fasano dining room and whisky list set the tone more than the rooms or pool do. Book it if you want São Paulo's most assured old-school Italian table under the same roof as your bed, and choose a higher suite category to match the scale of the public spaces.