Side by side Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul at Sultanahmet vs Four Seasons Ritz Lisbon

This is the old-town choice: a former prison turned 65-room courtyard hotel, a few minutes' walk from the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, and the reason people keep coming back is the staff, not the building. One guest was called by name on day one. Another had a birthday cake and champagne in the room, and the pillowcases changed to read "Happy Birthday," without ever mentioning the date to anyone. A manager sat down for dinner in the courtyard and pulled up old photos on an iPad to walk a guest through the building's past as a political (not violent) prison, the original beams still carrying prisoner inscriptions.

Price that against what's missing. There's no pool and no spa on property — you shuttle or take the courtesy yacht to the Bosphorus sister hotel for either, on set departure times that a few guests found inconvenient. The all-day restaurant is small for a Four Seasons, and while the courtyard breakfast gets consistent praise (the simit with honey, the Turkish eggs), dinner and the bar draw more mixed marks — one long-stay guest called the food and cocktails solidly good but not great. Rooms vary too: some suites split the bed and bathroom across two floors via a staircase, a quirk of the building's prison-era layout that a few travelers found genuinely annoying rather than charming.

Book this one for a first Istanbul trip, when walking to every major sight matters more than a pool. The location and the service are the case, and neither slips. Travelers wanting a bigger resort feel with a proper spa tend to look at the Bosphorus waterfront hotels instead, but for old-town charm and staff who notice everything, nothing nearby competes.

The Ritz Lisbon has been the Lisbon address for decades, and what you're paying for shows up fastest at breakfast: live cooking stations at the Sunday spread, dairy-free desserts arranged on request, a buffet several guests call the best hotel breakfast they've had anywhere. The rooms hold up too ­— recently renovated ones facing the park have private balconies, deep soaking tubs, twin sinks, and beds guests specifically credit for the best sleep they've had in years. The rooftop is its own reason to book: an 18-metre pool, a gym with pilates reformers and real daylight, and a sauna setup one traveller compared to a proper Greek bathhouse rather than a hotel add-on.

The trade-offs are real and worth pricing in before you book. The building itself is a plain concrete block from the outside, and it sits a genuine walk or a short Uber ride from the old town and the river, not in the middle of the tourist center. Breakfast service has drawn specific, recent complaints about disorganized seating and guests waiting at the door while tables sit empty, and at least one stay was disrupted by unannounced renovation noise starting early on a weekday morning. A thermostat that needed resetting multiple times during one stay, and a lost phone charger that staff couldn't locate, are the kind of small operational misses that shouldn't happen at these rates, though they read as inconsistent rather than typical.

Book it for the rooftop pool, the Sunday brunch, and rooms that several long-time Four Seasons guests rank among the brand's best in Europe. Families do well here too, with staff repeatedly credited for making kids feel genuinely welcome. If you want to fall out of bed onto cobblestones in Chiado, stay somewhere else; if you want a quiet, well-run base a short ride from everything, this is still the one.