Tomorrow night I'm going to be staying in Litomyšl Castle for the evening. It got me wondering how many WHS you can stay overnight in.

Obviously, you can camp in many of the natural sites, and the sites which are an entire city you can find a place to stay. How many specific structures, however, allow for overnight stays?

Oh nice, I didn't realise you could stay at Litomyšl, good to know.

I would imagine there are a lot of places that you would be able to stay in, even if we exclude the obvious historic centres and national parks etc.

But I think it would be interesting to know if specific special buildings that you could stay in, though I think we may have some sort of historic hotel connection that cover some of this.

My stay in the Preller Haus at the Bauhaus in Dessau a few years back was one of the best experiences I've had whilst hunting for WHS.

Likewise I have Tautes Heim in the Berlin Housing Estates on my radar for something in future.

The Czech Republic would probably have rather rich pickings.

In addition to the Palace at Litomšyl you can also stay in the palace at Valtice.

In Holasovice you can stay in one of the houses apparently.

Many of houses on the square in Telč seemed to have rooms to stay in.

The tentative list even contains a hotel (Jested) as a potential site, if you haven't read Solivagant's review it is well worth it.

And one member of this forum (at least) has been found asleep on the Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc, ahem :)

I'm in Olomouc right now. I counted how long it took me to walk around the column........57 seconds.

I would imagine that was a pretty slow walk as well!

Say hello to the old gal from me.

Excluding Cities/Towns and Natural parks etc
Monasteries are a good source of WHS where you can stay in - e.g Yuso (Spain), several of the recently inscribed Sansa (Korea). Mt Athos .......

Ah yes, monasteries of course, I stayed at Haeinsa but forgot that one.

And plenty of the albergues on the Camino to Santiago are specifically listed.

Nelson's Dockyard (Antigua) has a 5***** hotel (which means I would never have stayed in it!!)
Suomenlinna has a "Hostel" - but perhaps it isn't "fair" to count this island as a mere "Fortress"
The "Bull Ring" at Almaden is a specific inscribed location AND a large part of the building surrounding it is a hotel
Moenjodaro has a Government rest house situated inside the inscribed site - we have stayed there in the room allocated to Benazir Bhutto when she stayed!!

What a great topic, Gary -- I'm glad you specified overnight, since any World Heritage Site would work for a narcoleptic traveler! Here are a couple that come to mind:

Mont-Saint-Michel in France is an amazing place to visit overnight, once all the tourists have left. I stayed at a hotel on the island called La Mère Poulard, which I really enjoyed.

Fremantle Prison, part of the Australian Convict Sites, has a youth hostel in the former women's section of the prison.

The Rideau Canal in Canada can be experience by day and night by traveling along it in a houseboat.

If national parks were not excluded, I would highly recommend Wadi Rum in Jordan and pretty much all of the US and Canadian national parks. I'm also looking forward to camping along the Qhapaq Nan on an upcoming trip to Peru.

The Hotel in New Lanark is in a converted mill building - "Unlike any other in Scotland, the New Lanark Mill Hotel was originally an 18th century cotton mill. After years of painstaking restoration work,,,,,,, "

We have this connection already: https://www.worldheritagesite.org/connection/Hotels+in+Historic+Buildings , which I can extend to include some of the above

Another addition: Australian Convict Sites - Cockatoo Island - You can camp on the island or stay in apartments, right in the middle of Sydney Harbour, too.

Oh, and the Royal Saltworks in France, the newer half of the listing is now a hotel.

Mir Castle is half a hotel, which made the site even more disappointing than it already is.

I also think you can stay in one of the decorated farm houses in Sweden but it could be misleading and be a house just next to it. Maybe someone has done this and knows it better.

Indeed! They were converting it when I visited, it didn't look especially authentic in terms of the updates (plastic window frames etc), but the finished article may look a little better.


I stayed in the farmhouse situated between Pallars and Jan Lars. It is of a similar vintage, but not decorated inside. As far as I'm aware that may be the closest you can get.

Unless Clyde is able to swing a stay with his new friend :).

Oh that one does sound pretty special, and as you say it would be a good way of getting to experience the site without us tourist hordes.

le Havre: Heading along the Northern french coast a little more there is another one I have earmarked for a future stay. The Ibis (I bet no-one was really expecting that chain to show up in this thread) in le Havre is in one of the inscribed buildings and designed to reflect the original 40/50s interiors.

Brasilia: Keeping with the mid century modernist theme the utterly gorgeous Brasilia Palace Hotel is very much a place that will reflect the OUV of the site. I was within a gnat's crotchet of staying there, it just isn't in the most useful place for anything else in the city beyond seeing the President's Palace from behind the gates.

Mostar: I can thoroughly recommend staying at the National Monument-Muslibegovic House, it is a restored Ottoman Traders house that is mostly a museum, however it also functions as a hotel. The welcome was exceptional (especially for our eight month old daughter). Though it was only recently on checking this that I found it was outside both the core and buffer zones as Mostar's inscribed area is actually very small.