Market Pavilion Hotel

The pool

• Rooftop cascading pool
• Historic Charleston views
• Guests only
• No swimming after 5pm

Why it's on the list

Charleston's only rooftop cascading pool, by the hotel's own careful phrasing — a tiered pool on the Pavilion terrace with the Holy City's steeples laid out for the sunset. Guests only, and no swimming after 5pm.

The stay

Market Pavilion is the old-Charleston one — a 70-room hotel built in 2002 but dressed in 18th-century colonial detail, mahogany four-posters and oil paintings, standing at East Bay and Market across from the antebellum Customs House. It's family-owned, which shows in the fussed-over rooms and the service regulars won't stop mentioning. Downstairs is Grill 225, a proper USDA Prime steakhouse with a theatrical liquid-nitrogen martini; up top is the rooftop cascading pool and Pavilion Bar with the Historic District laid out below. At $$$ it's Charleston's most traditional luxury address — book it for the location and the steak; just know the rooftop pool is a guests-only amenity, not a public scene.