Fodor's Expert Review Hotel National

If you seek historical splendor, assiduous service, and plenty of plush comforts, this 1903 landmark, the city's most elegant hotel, is for you. Downstairs, a great marble staircase, prodigious portraits and landscapes in gilded frames, and a Viennese-style café with a spectacular panoramic view strike a note of refined grandeur. Upstairs, rooms are furnished with polished-oak furniture upholstered in silk, sumptuous beds, and all sorts of technologically advanced gadgetry. For some capitalistic indulgence, you can stay in a two-room suite where Lenin lived for a time in 1918.