The Raphael Hotel, Autograph Collection

Plaza charm, a walk from the shuttlecocks

★★★★★📍 Country Club Plaza, Kansas City$$$

The building opened in 1928 as the Villa Serena Apartments, on land bought from developer J.C. Nichols while his Country Club Plaza was taking shape. After about five decades as apartments, the Nichols company bought it in the 1970s and reopened it as the Raphael, a small European-style hotel whose early success helped popularize the boutique-hotel idea. It later joined Marriott's Autograph Collection and was renovated while keeping its small-scale, residential character — the kind of hotel where the staff remember guests' names. A restoration completed in 2010 refreshed the rooms, and the hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, belongs to Historic Hotels of America, and has earned AAA Four Diamond and Forbes Four Star ratings.

The stay craft: ask for a Plaza-view room, walk to the Nelson-Atkins in the morning for the galleries and the sculpture park, then return to the Plaza for lunch. Book a table at Chaz on a jazz night, and in winter time a visit for the Plaza Lights. A car or rideshare reaches the National WWI Museum and Memorial and the Crossroads arts district in about ten minutes. The Plaza Lights, switched on each year on Thanksgiving night, outline the district's towers and domes through the holiday season, a tradition dating to the 1920s.

Practicals: 325 Ward Parkway, Country Club Plaza, valet parking, about thirty minutes from Kansas City International Airport. Fit: art lovers, couples and Plaza-based museum weekends. Compared with the bigger chain hotels around the Plaza, the Raphael trades pools and large fitness rooms for character, quiet and a walk to the museum, and the free Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is close by for a second stop.