The Best Hotels Near L'Entre-Roches, by the Record
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A two-room bed and breakfast on the top floor of a building that's been around forever, in a mountain town that produces a remarkable share of France's pastis and absinthe. One room leans historical, the other contemporary, both decorated with an eclecticism that stops just short of chaos. It's a genuinely small operation, so if both rooms are booked, that's it. Pontarlier sits midway between Basel and Geneva, which helps explain the clientele.
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A 19th-century cloister in the old heart of Besançon, converted into a boutique hotel with just enough monastic bones left to feel like somewhere, not just somewhere nice. The name means "wild," which the nuns who preceded the guests would find baffling given the spa. Rooms look out over the citadel and the river, and there's a restaurant downstairs for the nights you'd rather not wander far.
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A 17th-century mansion in Arbois that its owners run as a five-room chambre d'hôtes, keeping enough of the private-home feel that you half expect someone's grandmother to appear with a key. Rooms draw on the town's natural surroundings for their decorative theme, antique in spirit but pulled together with boutique-hotel coherence. The owners are well-connected in Jura wine circles, which tends to make itself known in useful ways.
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A 17th-century Jura farmhouse that behaves nothing like one inside, Maison Zugno is a small country hotel where the owners have layered bold contemporary furniture and color against old stone and period bones. The standout room is L'Observatoire, a cylindrical freestanding suite with a curved picture window wrapping the bedroom. A small spa, outdoor pool, and jacuzzi round things out for anyone who came here specifically to do nothing.