PHOTO: The best view of the Eiffel Tower makes the Shangri-La Paris’ top suite among the tops in the city. (Courtesy of Shangri-La Hotels)

A stay in a luxury hotel suite has a way of transforming the experience of a place. No matter how new you are, if you’re staying in one of its top suites it’s a little like receiving a key to the city. How can you be a stranger when you have one of the best rooms in town? Many things go into the making of a great suite. The view, the location, the space, the furnishing and features all combine in different quantities to separate a suite out. We have selected five European suites that are among the finest in the world for different reasons.

The Gritti Palazzo Presidential Suite Venice

After hundreds of years of housing Venetian aristocrats including at least one Doge, The Gritti Palace in Venice became a luxury hotel in 1895. The 82-key hotel, known for its suites with Grand Canal views and signature suites inspired by personalities such as Ernest Hemingway, Somerset Maugham and Peggy Guggenheim, opened last May after a $55 million, 15-month restoration. The Gritti’s Palazzo Presidential Suite pays homage to Hemingway, who spent a long time in the hotel and wrote parts of Across the River and Into the Trees there.

PHOTO: Hemingway wrote parts of Across the River and Into the Trees at the Gritti Palace, above the Hemingway Suite. (Courtesy of Gritti Palace)

The suite’s design features stucco walls and ceiling cornices with Venetian Rococò motifs, as well as an eclectic collection of 19th-century antiques, including Hemingway’s personal club chair. The suite’s floor-to-ceiling window doors open onto balconies that afford direct views of the Grand Canal, from Punta della Dogana across to the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute and on to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The Palazzo Presidential Suite may be combined with other Palazzo Canal Suites to form a two-, three-, or four-room complex of rooms.

Mandarin Oriental Barcelona’s Presidential Suite

In just five years, the Mandarin Oriental  has managed to make itself a standout on Barcelona’s legendary Passeig de Gràcia. Earlier this month, the hotel unveiled 17 new luxury suites. The existing Presidential and Penthouse enters an unusual flare in the world of luxury with its use of avant-garde European tastes and traditional Orientalist styles. The Barcelona suite has a 1,324 square foot terrace with its own outdoor Jacuzzi and solarium.

PHOTO: From this suite you can look down on Barcelona’s Passeig de Gràcia from your own expansive terrace. (Courtesy of Mandarin Oriental)

The suite was designed by Patricia Urquiola whose designs have been included in the New York Museum of Modern Art’s design collection. The 98-room hotel offers exceptional services and facilities including a spa and two Michelin-starred dining by Carme Ruscalleda, within an exquisite interior also designed by Urquiola.

The Shangri-La Suite Paris

Great luxury hotels in Paris are more the norm than the exception and each one views its top suite as its essential flagship component, the place where the service and the splendor are impeccable. Rather than get into a tilting contest between which hotels do it better among a dozen hotels that do it great, it may be more interesting to highlight a different criteria, view. On that regard it’s hard to do better than a relative newcomer to the City of Lights, the Shangri-La Hotel.

The Shangri-La Paris opened in 2010 in an 1896 heritage building that once served as the home of Prince Roland Bonaparte. The hotel has 65 rooms and 36 suites, three restaurants (two of which are Michelin-starred), and a bar. Situated in the 16th arrondissement, the hotel is located across the Seine, facing the Eiffel Tower on its southern side. South-facing and bathed in natural light, 40 percent of the rooms and 60 percent of the suites feature direct head-on views of the Eiffel Tower and the Seine. Nearly half of the rooms and suites feature a private balcony.

La Suite Shangri-La, beginning at €20,000 sits atop the hotel and uses an interior that combines classic French empire furnishing to soften the room’s modernity. The 2,420-square-foot suite is complimented by a 1,076-square-foot terrace that offers a sweeping panoramic view over the city. The Suite Shangri-La can also be connected to create a private “apartment” spanning the entire seventh floor, with four bedrooms and a total living space of 5,382 square feet.

Surveying the Thames from the Savoy

It was just a few years ago that London’s Savoy Hotel invested £220 million in a complete refurbishment of the classic property. The hotel put up nine new suites, each one celebrating different illuminati in the hotel’s glorious history from Maria Callas and Marlene Dietrich to Charlie Chaplin and Frank Sinatra. Each of these suites is loaded with portraits and other items to conjure up the legendary ghost, but it’s the 3,500-square-foot Royal Suite that takes the cake at the hotel.

The Royal Suite is laid out in two bedrooms, a study, a sitting room, dining room, master bath and a dressing room with a specially ventilated shoe closet, all with panoramic views over the Thames from eight different windows spanning a slice of London ranging from Canary Wharf to the Houses of Parliament. For those who prefer bespoke dining, the suite has its own service kitchen – ideal for those traveling with a personal chef. The suite comes with a butler.

John & Yoko Suite Amsterdam

The Hilton Amsterdam’s John and Yoko Suite makes this list as a nod to the recent commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Fab Four’s first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in the February of 1964. For a week in the March of 1969, the world had its eyes on the Hilton Amsterdam where John and Yoko used the suite as the site of their bed-in to protest the Vietnam War. The 538 square foot suite has become the hotel’s most popular feature and Hilton has furnished it with a collection of John and Yoko memorabilia as well as a Bose sound system, so that you can listen to the appropriate music. The suite comes with one king bed.

PHOTO: This suite attracted the world’s attention in 1969 when John and Yoko bedded down here. (Courtesy of Hilton Amsterdam)

The John & Yoko Suite has been recreated as it was with the bed on the same spot, but with a few concessions to the more luxurious environment expected by today’s guests. The style of the decoration was approved and advised by Yoko Ono. The room is simply decorated and all materials are natural. Wood, stone and glass are the main materials used and all these material are symbolic of purity. The ceiling is an enlargement of the cover of the Album ‘the Plastic Ono Band/Live Peace in Toronto 1969’ and displays the first five bars of ‘All you need is love’.