The St. Regis Singapore is the first major luxury hotel to be built in this tiny island nation in 10 years.

The British monarch who ruled the largest empire in history would no doubt be pleased by the new 2 million ocean liner that the fabled Cunard Line recently christened after her. By any standard, Queen Victoria, known simply as “the QV,” is an imposing vessel.

Located 26 miles south of Cancún, the Mandarin occupies a one-mile-long, 150-yard-wide sliver of land that stretches from the region’s main highway to the Caribbean Sea. Reflecting pools line a thatch-roofed pavilion at the front of the property, where guests board golf carts for a ride through the jungle, past a cenote (a freshwater sinkhole), and along canals to their rooms.

In Munich, Germany, new boutiques and fashionable wine bars mingle with the city’s traditional beer-hall, brass-band gusto. This merry dance of old and new continues at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski München, a 150-year-old grande dame that occupies a commanding position on the broad Maximilianstrasse.

The historic Hotel Caruso, Orient-Express Hotels’ fourth property in Italy, incorporates the excavated remains of an 11th-century palace, a colonnade that dates to the 17th century, and buildings and artworks from the 1700s. But the property, which opened after a million restoration in 2005, does not lack for modern comforts.

Since 1867, the Amstel has been a fixture on the banks of its namesake river in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The hotel became an InterContinental property in 1981 and since has reduced the number of accommodations (which now total 55 guest rooms and 24 suites, most with views of the Amstel River).

Though it dates to 1861, Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne, Switzerland, is by no means fusty and old-fashioned. A recently completed million refurbishment—which spanned 12 years—has kept this Belle Epoque gem on the banks of Lake Geneva looking shiny and new.

Turn-of-the-20th-century Finnish composer Jean Sibelius is said to have seen music in shapes and colors. This may explain why, when he needed inspiration, Sibelius retired to the Hotel Kämp in Helsinki, Finland.