A small 17th-century chapel marks the entrance to Il San Pietro di Positano, while the rest of the hotel clings desperately to the cliffside below, each level descending the face like a staircase.

This picture might seem too good to be true, but the reality of Alila Jabal Akhdar is no less wondrous. The hotel sits atop a jagged cliff within Oman’s Al Hajar mountain range, offering mesmerizing views into the surrounding gorge (and sometimes over the clouds).

Because of its challenging location on a steep Santorini hillside, it was necessary to build Vora by hand using traditional methods — a technique that ensures the hotel meshes well with its epic surroundings.

The infinity pools at Viceroy Bali are known for their awe-inspiring views — their edges peer out into space from high up on a hillside overlooking the lush (and steep) Lembah Valley.

That the Kumaon even exists is almost unbelievable. When the owners found this site, high among the Indian Himalayas, no roads led to it. A simple log cabin would have been challenging enough to construct. The Kumaon is no log cabin. It is a work of hotel art, a feat of tropical modernism superimposed on a mountaintop almost entirely by hand.

Corte della Maestà makes its home in a medieval village that was completely deserted after a 17th-century earthquake. La cittá che muore – the dying city — is perched on a rock outcropping, accessible only via a long footbridge.

And now for something completely different. The upper floors of Nhow Berlin, with their shiny metallic skin, cantilever dramatically out over the river Spree. The design is a triumph by architect Sergei Tchoban.

Continuing with the theme of groundbreaking architecture (and physics), Hotel Viura’s precariously-stacked guest rooms imagine what a hotel might look like if it were designed by Picasso in his cubist period.

The Rosewood Guangzhou may be the highest five-star hotel in the world, reaching all the way to the 108th floor of the CTF Finance Center. But it also scales heights that are more metaphorical, and those are the ones we’re more interested in: you’d be hard pressed to find contemporary interiors more elegant than Rosewood’s.

The open-air, open-wall suites at Ladera Resort cling to a volcanic ridge far up above Pitons Bay, making for some of the Caribbean’s most extraordinary views. We hope you aren’t prone to sleepwalking.