Art Hotels

Zermatt fills twice over, and the resort on the slope above the village fills with it. Skis come off at the door through the cold months, and boots take their place once the paths have dried out. The terraces run at full stretch, the kitchens work every service, and the shuttle up from the station barely stops moving.

Between the two halves the mountain empties. Lifts stand still, the village trades on a much shorter list of open doors, and the resort steps back from the pace it keeps for the rest of the year. Fewer people work in the building. What sound there is comes from the slope rather than the terrace below.

A house that is not full is a house that can be taken apart. Rooms are stripped, surfaces are made good, and the plant that carries a whole building through a whole winter gets its yearly attention while nobody is trying to sleep above it.

Ask what is actually running before you plan anything around the terraces, the spa or the shuttle up.

St. Moritz has kept two seasons since the first winter guests were talked into staying, and this house has worked both of them ever since. The lake draws one crowd when it is frozen and another when it is not. Inside, the long rooms are busy from the first breakfast until the last table clears.

Then the valley thins out. The hotel steps down between its two halves, and much of what a full season needs stands idle: a rink without skaters, a hall without a sitting, corridors carrying only the sound of a trolley. The town's shorter list of open doors is a fair map of the mood.

The gap is when a building of this age gets looked at properly. Old fabric is repaired, services are tested, and seasonal fittings are taken out, checked and put back. None of that can happen while several hundred people are asleep upstairs.

Ask which restaurants, pools and rinks are working in the weeks you have in mind, rather than assuming.

This one stands on a shoulder of the Bürgenstock ridge with Lake Lucerne a long way below it. In the warm half of the year the road up is a queue, the terrace is full from mid-morning onwards, and the outdoor pool at the edge of the lawn is rarely without somebody in it.

In the cold half the same view goes grey and the ridge belongs to nobody in particular. Far fewer cars come up. The terrace furniture is put away, the lawn is left to the weather, and the gap between the two halves of the year is as plain here as anywhere in the country.

Quiet on a ridge means access. Scaffolding can go up without blocking arrivals, the road can be worked on, and the gardens can be cut back hard enough to matter. A small hotel gets a small window for that kind of work.

Ask whether the pool, the terrace and the mountain road are open before you build a day around them.

Hemsedal is a ski valley first, and this hotel stands high on the slope where that is obvious. Through the snow months the entrance is a ski entrance: racks outside, wet floors inside, a dining room that fills in one sitting and empties in another. The lift line runs almost to the wall.

When the snow goes the building does not close, but it turns into something else. Walkers and cyclists take the place of skiers, and there are far fewer of them. The terrace faces a green valley instead of a white one, and whole parts of the house are simply not needed for weeks at a stretch.

That change of use is also the maintenance window. Glass is cleaned properly, the exterior timber is treated, and equipment that spent a whole winter in salt and grit is stripped right down and rebuilt before the next winter arrives.

Ask what the road and the lift are doing, since a mountain address depends on both of them.

Salina is small and the crossing is by boat, which sets the shape of the year. In the warm months the tables under the vines are laid every evening, the rooms are taken, and the harbour below sends up a steady traffic of arrivals with bags. Visitors walk the vineyard as often as the growers do.

Then the island shuts. The hotel closes altogether for the cold half of the year, ferry sailings thin out, and most of the places that fed the season put up their shutters alongside it. The vines stay where they are and keep to their own calendar, which pays no attention to whether the rooms are let.

A full closure buys a full reset. Rooms are emptied and repainted, the salt is stripped back, and the work in the vineyard that cannot be done with people standing in the rows is done while the rows are empty.

Ask about the boat before anything else, because on an island the crossing decides all the rest.

Punta del Este has one loud stretch of the year, and this estate outside town works to it. During those weeks the beach clubs run, the roads carry Argentine and Brazilian plates, and the low buildings across the grounds are all in use, from the stables to the tables above the sea.

Outside that stretch the coast empties in a way that catches first-time visitors out. Whole streets in town are shuttered, the traffic goes, and the estate keeps a much smaller operation running across a very large piece of ground. The sea is exactly the same; the number of people looking at it is not.

The long quiet is when a coastal property fights the salt. Metalwork is treated, paint is renewed, and the grounds, which take a beating from wind and sun through the busy weeks, are replanted and given time to take.

Ask which restaurants and beach services are running, since a large estate does not open all of itself.