NO. 1
PERY SQUARE HOTEL & SPA, LIMERICK, IRELAND
PHOTO GALLERY
Limerick, Ireland's third city, is on the rise, and No. 1 Pery Square is its new standard-bearer. Overlooking a tree-lined park, this 20-room hotel created from two 18th-century townhouses (one largely rebuilt), brings luxury country-house living to the city.
A five-year labour of love for owners Patricia and George Roberts, it combines period furniture and paintings with classy contemporary pieces. The large Period Style Rooms have super-size beds made up with fine Irish linen, and there are freestanding baths and hand-woven Georgian screens in the bathrooms.
The smaller, more contemporary Club Rooms in the rebuilt house have individual touches such as Aran throws over the beds and Bath Butler menus (including seaweed baths). The Irish ethos is key, even in the hotel's biggest wow factor, the largest urban spa in Ireland, which is housed in its atmospheric cellars. Here guests can bliss out in the Irish Mist Steam Shower, absorbing wild Irish herbs, or indulge in treatments using exclusive Voya seaweed products.
Even the ingredients for the excellent, French-influenced Brasserie One are sourced from top artisan Irish food producers (pig's trotters, a local delicacy, are reinvented as a contemporary classic).
