The Best Hotels in Delhi

The veranda and public rooms do the heavy lifting here, which is exactly how it should be at a grand old colonial hotel. Built in the 1930s by a Lutyens associate, the Imperial has been New Delhi's benchmark for old-world elegance ever since. Rooms run from very-English traditional to Art Deco, all with marble bathrooms and Porthault linens. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys.

The lobby alone could host a small nation-state, which is fitting for a hotel planted in the Diplomatic Enclave. Rooms run genuinely large even by Delhi standards, with grand beds, mirror televisions in the bathrooms, and views that cover real ground. Four restaurants sit under the roof, including Jamavar for biryanis and Le Cirque for when you want to eat Italian in Asia. The Michelin Guide awarded it two Keys.

Suites on the upper floors come with private plunge pools on the balcony, which sets the tone for this grand luxury hotel sitting squarely in Lutyens' Delhi, near Humayun's Tomb and the quiet estates of government. The courtyard pool is the social heart of the place, with a poolside cafe doing Thai food and cocktails beside it. Two bars, an Italian restaurant, and a globe-spanning dining room round things out. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Perched in Lutyens' Delhi, the leafy government quarter where temperatures run cooler than the surrounding city, this grand luxury hotel has long been the address of choice for visiting heads of state and the CEOs who want the same treatment. A full-service property with a pool, spa, tennis courts, and golf access nearby, it holds a Michelin Key. The rooftop Grill Room looks out over one of Delhi's more quietly handsome stretches of colonial-era gardens and bungalows.

A Hong Kong group bringing East Asian cool to Delhi's government district, this 320-room high-rise trades colonial grandeur for clean modern lines and sleek Asian-inspired furnishings. Rooms come fully loaded, and the upper-floor Horizon Club adds a private lounge and views over the city. A spa, pool, and a whisky-and-cigar bar round things out, making it the kind of hotel that knows exactly what a road-weary executive needs by 9pm.

The manicured lawns and gazebos here look much as they did when the hotel first opened, and no one seems in a hurry to change that. This is a grande dame New Delhi hotel with parquet floors, marble bathrooms, and four-poster beds, anchored by a freeform pool ringed in white cabanas. An old-fashioned bakery handles chocolate cake; the bar pours vodka and hosts nightly jazz. Spanish food by candlelight on the terrace rounds out a place that has aged with quiet confidence.

Twelve rooms, two restaurants, and a bar that pulls in Delhi locals who have no particular reason to be in a hotel, which tells you something about the ambiance here. The Manor is a boutique hotel tucked into the leafy calm of Friends Colony, and after a careful renovation it wears that calm like it was purpose-built yesterday. Gardens, an Ayurvedic spa, an art gallery cycling through new work, all of it unhurried in a city that rarely is.

Perched inside Delhi's Aerocity development, a whole mini-city conjured at the airport's edge, this ultraluxury hotel leans into the ambition of its surroundings. Rooms run to warm ochres, rain showers, and oversize tubs, while higher floors add a 24-hour butler in case you've forgotten what it's like to want for nothing. There's an all-day restaurant, a cocktail bar swinging for NYC credentials, a rooftop pool café, and a spa. Hot-air balloon rides, apparently.

Full-length windows and domed ceilings pull the sky into each of the 50 rooms at this airport hotel that quietly refuses the category. Marble bathrooms with rain showers, a spa using natural products, and an outdoor pool handle the decompression, while two restaurants and a crimson cocktail bar with live piano handle everything else. The manicured gardens offer the one thing neither the plane nor the boardroom could: uncrowded silence.