Fodor's Expert Review Taj Nadesar Palace Hotel

This restored heritage palace provides the most luxurious accommodations in Varanasi, as it did in its heyday, when guests of the Maharaja of Benaras included Queen Elizabeth, Lord Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the king of Persia. The rooms, evoking that bygone era, are elaborately furnished with pieces from the maharaja's private collection—voluptuous four-poster teak beds with silk canopies, Victorian-style armoires, antique bathtubs. There's a pool with ghatlike steps, a golf course, and manicured gardens amid fields of marigolds, jasmine, and mango trees. The signature spa treatment is based on the ritual purifying bath once performed on royalty for special occasions. Rooms are named after patrons who once stayed in them, so if you want to live a bit like the queen of Bhutan once did, ask for her room.