01
The painted ceiling, drawing room
Zhang Enli was given the drawing room ceiling and turned it into a sky of his own — rivers of colour winding above the lamps. You walk in for a drink and look up first.
Braemar · Scotland
The Fife Arms
A Victorian coaching inn in Braemar, restored by Manuela and Iwan Wirth and hung with serious art — Lucian Freud, Picasso, Bruegel, Zhang Enli — set inside the Cairngorms.
The verdict
A Victorian coaching inn brought back by gallerists, with a museum's collection hung over a Highland kitchen and the Cairngorms beginning at the door. Quietly the most curious country hotel in Britain.
From the editors · Vedere House
The particulars
- Style
- Victorian coaching inn, restored by Manuela and Iwan Wirth
- Setting
- Braemar, on the edge of Cairngorms National Park
- Art
- Lucian Freud, Picasso, Bruegel, Zhang Enli's painted ceiling, a Richard Jackson neon chandelier
- Tables
- The Clunie for the long Sunday roast; Bertie's whisky room; Elsa's for the late hour
- Rooms
- Forty-six, each individually written — Scottish, Victoriana, Nature & Poetry
- Best for
- A long autumn week, walked into the heather and back to the fire
- Season
- Late August through November for the heather and the deer; deep winter for the snow
The Fife Arms sits at the bottom of Braemar — a granite Victorian coaching inn on the road that climbs into the Cairngorms. Manuela and Iwan Wirth, who run Hauser & Wirth, bought it in 2014 and spent four years putting it back together. The result is a country hotel with the seriousness of a gallery: a Lucian Freud on a deep red wall, a Picasso sketch turned up in a passageway, a Brueghel hung at domestic scale, a Zhang Enli ceiling in the drawing room and a Richard Jackson chandelier of neon and antlers above the stair.
The kitchen is the other half of the conversation. The Clunie cooks Highland produce with the confidence of a long table; Bertie's is the whisky room; Elsa's, the cocktail bar, takes the night. Forty-six rooms have been written one at a time — the Scottish, Victoriana and Nature & Poetry suites each tell their own story, with tartan, carved beds, peacocks and portraits in measured proportion.
Outside, the Cairngorms begin within a hundred yards. By late August the hills go lilac with heather; by October the gillies are watching the river; by January the snow can hold a week. The hotel arranges what Braemar always arranged — a walk, a stalk, a fly on the Dee, a fire to come back to.
Signature moments
02
Sunday roast at The Clunie
A long Highland kitchen at the centre of the building. The Sunday lunch is the table you book first — beef from a local farm, Yorkshire puddings the size of a fist, claret poured slowly.
03
A walk into the heather
From the bridge it is twenty minutes into open ground. By August the hills are lilac for miles; the Lairig Ghru and Lochnagar are within the day. The hotel sends a flask, a map, and someone who knows where to turn.
Inside the house
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Le Carnet