The Best Places to Stay and Do in Perth

A series of restored 19th-century state government buildings, all soaring arches and white columns, makes for an unlikely but very convincing luxury hotel. The 48 rooms are cool, pale, and quiet, with heated stone bathroom floors, freestanding oval tubs, and blackout curtains run by remote. There's a rooftop restaurant, a spa, and a cocktail bar. Perth is a long way from anywhere, which is precisely when a hotel this considered earns its keep. It holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star.

The 23-foot woven ceiling in the lobby sets the tone: this is a resort hotel that took Western Australia's landscape as a design brief and followed it all the way to a lagoon pool and an 8,000-piece ceramic mosaic behind reception. Rooms are polished, service is formal without being stiff, and the whole complex sits minutes from the city. Forbes Four Star. Pack accordingly.

Floor-to-ceiling windows mean the Swan River is essentially a fixture in every suite, and the hotel has leaned into that so hard there are no standard rooms, only suites and studios. The Ritz-Carlton sits at Elizabeth Quay amid the shiny new Perth waterfront, close enough to the city's main sights to walk or catch a river cruise. An Australian art collection roams the corridors, and the infinity pool, the rooftop bar, and the spa round out a property that takes the view very seriously.

Built around 12th-century farmhouse ruins, this Six Senses resort sits above the Paro National Museum at 8,800 feet, with the valley spreading out in three directions from nearly every room. The 16 suites and scatter of villas lean into Himalayan craft, stone floors, timber, and vegetable-dyed rugs, while the semi-underground spa adds an indoor heated pool and a pine-trail meditation walk. Tiger's Nest is a short drive; so is the airport. Forbes Four Star.

The team that built a local reputation on roasted coffee, craft beer, and artisanal spirits opened this 74-room hotel in Perth's Cultural Centre neighborhood, and it shows. Guest rooms come with Italian linens and local Sodashi toiletries, but the rooftop terrace at sunset is the point, followed closely by the Shadow Wine Bar and the honesty bar in the mezzanine lounge. A fleet of Lekker bikes waits downstairs, helmets and hand-drawn maps included.

Most InterContinentals play it safe; this one in Perth's CBD collected a museum's worth of contemporary Western Australian art and called it décor. The modernist building, with its grid of square windows, sets the tone, and the rooms carry it through: monochrome-and-gold palette, deep texture, marble bathrooms with rain showers, and CBD views worth lingering over. Two restaurants fold Spanish technique into local ingredients, one a tapas bar, one working a wood-fired grill.

Stone walls thick enough to silence Fremantle's port noise, original beams overhead, and a plaque outside reminding you that the last guests here weren't exactly voluntary. This heritage hotel was built as cottages for the guards of the old convict prison, and the bones remain: timber floors, hand-crafted furniture, and family cottages with private courtyards. A Michelin Selected Hotel, and one where checking in doubles as a reasonably haunting history lesson.