Faena Hotel Miami Beach

The pool

• Ground-level oceanfront pool
• Striped cabanas
• Hotel guests
• Direct beach access

Why it's on the list

Alan Faena's maximalist monument to another era — the pool runs at garden level between the hotel and the sand, flanked by candy-striped cabanas that are gloriously over the top. Not a rooftop, but one of the most theatrical pools in the country.

The stay

The Faena is the theatrical one — Alan Faena and Baz Luhrmann's 2015 reinvention of the old Saxony Hotel into a red-velvet fever dream on Mid-Beach, anchoring the cultural cluster of the Faena District. Catherine Martin's cabaret-Deco interiors, a gold-cased Damien Hirst mammoth between the lobby and the sand, Francis Mallmann's open-fire Los Fuegos, and an actual cabaret theater put it somewhere between a hotel and a production. The 22,000-square-foot Tierra Santa spa and the striped-umbrella pool are the calmer counterweight. At $$$$ it's among the priciest rooms in Miami and never pretends otherwise — book it for the spectacle and the service; the trade is that restraint was never on the menu.