Atlantis The Royal

About

Rising above Palm Jumeirah like a stack of giant glass blocks balanced by a particularly confident engineer, it dominates the Dubai coastline long before you reach the entrance. The building itself is the attraction. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, the architects behind some of the world's most ambitious skyscrapers, the hotel consists of interlocking volumes that seem to float above one another. From certain angles it looks less like a resort and more like a futuristic city suspended in mid air. Inside, restraint was clearly never part of the plan. There are soaring atriums, vast terraces, hundreds of palm trees and swimming pools that appear in places where common sense would normally intervene. Yet what surprises most is that the architecture actually works. Beneath the spectacle sits a remarkably coherent building with extraordinary views across the Gulf and back towards Dubai's skyline. The culinary ambitions are equally oversized. Few hotels can claim restaurants from Heston Blumenthal, José Andrés and Costas Spiliadis under one roof. Fewer still can claim Beyoncé performed at their opening. Atlantis The Royal is not the Dubai of old souks, wind towers and trading history. It is Dubai at its most ambitious, most confident and occasionally most outrageous. Whether that appeals depends entirely on what you seek from travel. As an expression of architecture, hospitality and modern luxury, it is difficult to think of anything quite like it.