4 Best Hotels in Kentucky Bluegrass Country, Kentucky

Four-foot tall red plastic penguins line the roof of this boutique hotel and modern art museum like friendly sentries. When it opened in 2006, 21C immediately attracted national acclaim for its elegant restoration of a 19th-century building, attention to service, and cutting-edge art collection. Guests mingle with gallery visitors and locals who are dining in the hotel's award-winning restaurant, Proof on Main. All of the designer-decorated rooms are spacious, but the best have private patios overlooking the city, where—on a sunny Kentucky morning—you can enjoy room-service breakfast while wearing a plush hotel bathrobe. At the end of the day, soak in the large bathtub while sipping bourbon from the silver julep cup provided in each room.

Opened in 1923, this grand-but-intimate hotel has a gilded second-floor lobby that gleams with marble and polished wood. Rooms are furnished with fine reproductions and luxurious bedding. A special Louisville dish, the Hot Brown, was invented here—you can order the turkey/bacon/cheese sandwich–casserole hybrid from room service.

This small, European-style hotel is on the edge of historic Gratz Park. The Federalist–Georgian architecture and decor are inviting, and the house reportedly is home to a friendly ghost.

Seven U.S. presidents and such notables as gangster Al Capone, the Duchess of York, and author F. Scott Fitzgerald (who set a scene in The Great Gatsby here) have stayed at this historic hotel, which celebrated its 100 anniversary in 2005. Check out the live jazz in the bar off the lobby before retiring to your four-poster for the night.