The Best Places to Drink and Stay in Ipanema

Philippe Starck designed this Ipanema beachfront hotel with conspicuous restraint, which for him is a kind of performance art. The leather-and-dark-hardwood interiors lean into a sultry mid-century mood, while the rooftop infinity pool in white marble looks out over Sugarloaf and down onto the beach eight floors below. A section of private beach and the Italian seafood restaurant, Fasano al Mare, mean there's little reason to leave, though the hotel's limousines stand ready to prove you wrong.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Three floors do three different things here: a bar on the ground level, a snug dining room in the middle, and an open terrace on top for when the Rio night cooperates. The contemporary menu pulls from food cultures across the globe without announcing itself about it. The cocktail program is the real conversation starter, though, folding Amazonian ingredients like jambu and tucupi into drinks that have no right being as coherent as they are.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A family-run boutique hotel one block off Ipanema Beach, designed as a conscious nod to Brazilian modernism, with Sergio Rodrigues chairs and mid-century pieces scattered throughout. Standard rooms are compact but comfortable; the Duplex Suite edges into grander territory. When the beach is a ninety-second walk away, guests tend to forgive a hotel for being low-key rather than relentlessly entertaining, which suits this place just fine.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels