Lucy Kehoe

The Afar take: A new independent hotel that earns its rates—and its place on our Best New Hotels 2026 list—by making London’s less visited Fitzrovia neighborhood feel like a discovery.

An 11th-century hamlet in the Chianti hills has just opened as a hotel, with 17 suites, two pools and a terrace restaurant overlooking lavender fields. Located outside Florence, the newly transformed La Darbia Chianti is built within a cluster of ancient stone buildings that Italian architects and brothers Gian Carlo and Matteo Primatesta, who also co-own the property, spent years restoring, with local materials and artisans employed to resurrect the historic properties.

Most South Africans know the Karoo as somewhere you pass through. The semi-arid interior of the country, stretching from the Cape winelands north towards Johannesburg, is the country’s connective tissue. Crossing it means a couple of days’ driving through scrubland, dust and grazing sheep, punctuated by pit stops at farm guesthouses and for padkos, the Afrikaans ritual of food for the road. You don’t go to the Karoo. You go through it.