Travel
Six Hotels Where Silence Is the Amenity
The rarest sound in modern life may be silence. These six hotels make disconnection their greatest luxury — whether through weak phone signal, remote settings, or dinners eaten in quiet.
Eremito
Umbria, Italy
A modern hermitage carved into the Umbrian hills near Parrano. Fourteen stone-walled single celluzzas (not rooms) are lit by candle and heated by log stove; days are shaped by yoga, hiking and meditation; dinners are vegetarian, served in silence by candlelight. No TV, no phone signal, no plus-ones. Instead: a chapel converted into a yoga studio, a steam cave, and the slow rhythm of monastic life — reinvented for travellers who need a complete reset.
Arctic Bath
Harads, Swedish Lapland
A circular ring-shaped spa floating on the Lule River above the Arctic Circle, surrounded by six on-land and six floating cabins. The hotel freezes into the river each winter and drifts gently in summer. Saunas and cold plunges sit at the heart of the design; the surrounding forest is silent for miles. Reindeer sightings, Sami heritage experiences, and under the Northern Lights from October to March.
Fogo Island Inn
Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada
Standing on stilts above the North Atlantic on a 25-mile island of 2,500 people, every one of the 29 suites faces the open ocean. Passing icebergs between May and July, humpback whales from June onward, and changing weather are the only entertainment. Community-owned, with 100% of operating surpluses reinvested in the island. Named one of National Geographic's Unique Lodges of the World and widely considered among the most remote luxury hotels on earth.
Explora Patagonia
Torres del Paine, Chile
Set on the shores of Lake Pehoé with uninterrupted views of the Paine Massif, Explora is the original luxury base inside Chile's Torres del Paine National Park. Rates are all-inclusive and built around guided explorations — more than 40 hikes, horseback rides and ice walks across glaciers, lagoons and granite peaks. Evenings are spent at the bar watching the Patagonian light shift over the water. Fifty rooms, no mobile phones in common areas, and some of the most dramatic landscape on earth.
A shukubo on Mount Kōya
Kōyasan, Wakayama, Japan
A shukubo is a Buddhist temple lodging high in the sacred mountains of Kōya-san — a 1,200-year-old monastic complex two hours south of Osaka. Over fifty temples welcome overnight guests to tatami rooms, vegetarian shōjin-ryōri cuisine served on lacquer trays, and the option to join the monks for morning prayers, meditation and sutra copying at dawn. Ekō-in and Fukuchi-in are the most refined. A thousand years of silence, kept.
Juvet Landscape Hotel
Valldal, Norway
Nine glass-walled cabins stand on stilts along the Valldøla River in Norway's remote fjord country, four hours west of Trondheim. The architecture is designed to disappear — each cabin faces a different view, with floor-to-ceiling glass and no two orientations the same. The landscape (birch trees, running water, mountains) becomes the view from every room. Instantly recognisable from Alex Garland's film Ex Machina. Open May to September only.
