Top 5

Luxury Swimming Pools

By Karen Burshtein

Today, hotel swimming pools are more than a perk – they're a design focal point. Architects are clamoring for pool commissions and featuring things like colored lights and underwater windows. Here is our roundup of five luxe hotel swimming holes around the world.

La Purificadora, Mexico

Hotel Omni Mont-Royal, Montreal

This outdoor pool, accessed via a swim-through tunnel, is part of a private gym on the hotel’s fourth floor. Used by both Montreal’s downtown business crowd and Omni guests, the pool offers alfresco swimming during sub-zero Montreal winters. But before you can say "brr," you realize that the foot of steam coming off the heated water keeps your bobbing head as warm as a brioche. The floor-to-ceiling office windows surrounding the pool add another shiver of excitement as you forget about work in favor of play.

Parrot Cay Resort, Turks and Caicos

No matter how many we see, infinity pools with seemingly edgeless sides still manage to leave us awestruck. The 5,000-square-foot pool at the stylish Parrot Cay resort on the Caribbean island of Turks and Caicos is possibly the most fabulous example of this. A stunning piece of Modernist pool architecture set amid an idyllic setting of white sand and palm trees, the infinity pool appears to spill its water into the famously crystal-clear sea. The effect is both sexy and Zen, befitting a resort that draws a fashion-conscious clientele to its yoga retreats.

La Purificadora, Puebla, Mexico

Housed in a converted 19th-century water-purification plant, the Purificadora’s pool is not any old natatorium. At this new boutique hotel in Puebla (the lovely 19th-century city between Mexico City and Oaxaca), Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta has designed a rooftop pool of note. Above-ground with one glass side, the 98-foot lap pool offers poolside guests full-on views of swimmers, with the Baroque Iglesia de San Francisco and the city’s famed colonial architecture providing a dramatic backdrop. Gives new meaning to the words “breathtaking views.”

The Standard, Los Angeles

The Standard can be credited for jump-starting the current rooftop-pool trend. In keeping with the property’s ultramod, Jetson-like aesthetic, the pool has red Perspex seating pods with heated water beds. It didn’t take long after the hotel’s 2001 opening for its wet-and-wild pool parties – sometimes including late-night skinny dips – to become legendary. Swimmers (and revelers) appreciate the 360-degree views of downtown L.A. and, as a bonus, the classic Hollywood movies projected onto surrounding office buildings.

Palazzo Sasso Ravello, Italy

This ultraluxe hotel is a 12th-century villa that sits atop a cliff spilling down to the Mediterranean on the romantic Amalfi coast. Soaking it all in, you have to ask yourself, Could there be a more spectacular vista? But the property has still gone the extra mile – or at least the extra few feet. The Palazzo Sasso’s 65-foot stone-edged pool has underwater windows that allow subterranean views of the Mediterranean Sea. So as you swim past the windows, you may just look like a plasma-screen-TV image to the fish that are watching you watching them.

(Karen Burshtein, a long-time Paris resident, covers the European fashion front for the National Post and also writes for publications such as Condé Nast Traveler, Gourmet and Paris-update.com.)

TOP PHOTO: GRUPO HABITA
PALAZZO SASSO RAVELLO: GENIVS LOCI / PALAZZO SASSO