AMBERLEY CASTLE

Sussex, England

This site so resembles a movie set, you half expect French knights to taunt you from the parapets. But its long history is thoroughly English, dating back to a King of Wessex granting land to a powerful bishop in 683. A fortified manor house was recorded in the famed 1086 Domesday Book census, then sacked by anti-royalists during the English Civil War. A series of lord-andduke types supervised upkeep until full restoration as a hotel in 1989. Royal treatment: Though the hospitality drips English countryside (afternoon tea! scones with clotted cream!), every nook and cranny holds medieval accents such as exposed stone and suits of armor— and there are lots of nooks and crannies.

King Henry VIII passed through Amberley’s twin tower gatehouse in 1526 when he visited the resident bishop to seek advice on shedding his first wife.

The property’s 19 bedrooms are spread between the manor house, the tower house and a former dairy.