Mountain-top hotels

3 of a kind

BERGHOTEL GRAWAND, ITALY

Maso Corto 111, 39020 Val Senales, South Tyrol, Italy, 0039 0473 662118, grawand.com

What: At 3,212m this is the highest hotel in the Alps (below), reached by a cable car that stops at 4.30pm, leaving you physically cut off from the world at night, but able to survey it from above. It is in the small ski resort of Val Senales in the South Tyrol, between Innsbruck and St Moritz. Skiers can step straight out onto a ski slope while others can take a trip up to the glacier where 5,300-year-old iceman Ötzi was found in 1991. The hotel also has a pool, sauna and steam rooms and a games area.

Rooms: Double rooms in this hotel get the best views – to the glacier, down ski runs with a classic red cable car hanging above them as well as across a sea of 3,000 metre high mountains. Rooms with three and four beds face the glacier. Half-board starts at €58 a day for adults (€29 for children).

HOTEL JESTED, CZECH REPUBLIC

Horni Hanychov 153, Liberac 8, 00420 485 104291, jested.cz

What: This three-star hotel, at 1,012m, is designed in such a way that it completes the mountain top, bringing it to a peak (above). The hotel, in the north of the country, was designed in the late 1960s by local architect Karel Hubacek who was guided by the fact that there was already a television transmitter here and it needed to be part of the building. The resulting hotel, which picked up an architecture award in 1969 and another in 2000 (when it was named the best Czech building of the 20th century), has a futuristic shape and its space-age look is carried through to the interior designed by Otakar Binar. Bedrooms have inward sloping curved walls, tall bands of windows and sky level views: you could be in a spacecraft. Access is by cable car, road or foot.

Rooms: There are two suites and 12 double rooms (plus five more rooms in a one-star section of the building). Double rooms range in price from 1,320czk to 2,300czk (€52-€90) including breakfast.

HOTEL PILATUS-KULM, SWITZERLAND

Schlossweg 1, 6010 Kriens, Lucerne, 0041 329 11 112, info@pilatus.ch

What: From the windows of this hotel on Mount Pilatus, at 2,132m above sea level high above the Swiss city of Lucerne, you'll spot paragliders flying past at eye level and watch cog lifts chugging up and down the mountain (below). The world's steepest cogwheel railway, at a 48 degree gradient, is here. And once the lifts have stopped you will be "stranded" up here. Views are down to lakes and across a panorama of 73 peaks. Clear night skies and fresh mountain air are punctuated by clanging cowbells.

This belle epoque hotel first opened in 1890 and was refurbished last year to create a designer experience: über chic, über clouds. The exterior is in a functional style, looking like a train station nestled into a ridge near the mountain peak. Inside, apart from the warm sleek bedrooms with windows overlooking the breath snatching scenery, there is an opulent classical style restaurant, called Queen Victoria, named after her majesty who once passed through here.

Rooms: There are 27 rooms decorated in a modern alpine style and three exclusive suites. Prices range from 95 francs to 280 Swiss francs (€78-€230) with breakfast.