The Oldest Hotels in Europe (2026)

The founding asset here is a stone tower the Pisan winemakers' guild raised on the Arno in the 11th century, around 1050, and used as both headquarters and lodging. The patina deepened in 1837, when Pasquale Piegaja bought the tower and the houses beside it, spent two years joining them, and opened a proper hotel in 1839; he named it for Queen Victoria, newly crowned across the Channel. The same family, the Piegajas, has kept the keys ever since, which is the rarest continuity on this page: nearly two centuries under one house, on foundations nine centuries deep.

Stay here if: you want the oldest hotel in Italy with the Leaning Tower a short walk off, and prefer a family-run grande dame to a chain. Ask for: a riverfront room over the Lungarno; the Arno is the view the guild built for.

The qualifier, honestly: the hotel as a hotel dates to 1839, not 1050; the older claim belongs to the building and its guild use. The rooms are characterful rather than uniform, some are snug and creak with their age, and the address trades on history more than on modern polish.

Source: Royal Victoria Hotel, history; Wikipedia.

"At the Red Bear" stands on a Romanesque-Gothic arcade house whose lower courses go back to the founding of Freiburg around 1120, which is why the house claims to be the oldest inn in Germany, and on a good day the oldest in Europe. The earliest landlord history can name, Hanmann Bienger, is entered in a 1387 land register of the nearby Adelhausen monastery, so a documented innkeeper has stood behind this door for more than six centuries. The Baroque era reshaped the facade; the welcome, by the house's own count, has passed through some fifty generations of landlords.

Stay here if: you are assembling an oldest-inns itinerary and want the German anchor, in a walkable old town at the gate of the Black Forest. Ask for: a room in the historic house rather than a modernized annexe; the stone vaulting is the reason to come.

The qualifier, honestly: the 1120 belongs to the building; documented innkeeping begins in 1387, and the "oldest in Europe" billing is contested by Pisa and others. This is a comfortable three-star, not a grand hotel: expect heritage and warmth, not suites or a spa.

Source: Visit Freiburg; Wikipedia.

Hurley Priory needed a guest house for its pilgrims, and in 1135 it built one; that hostelry on the bank of the Thames became the Olde Bell, which advances its claim as the oldest hotel in the United Kingdom on the strength of that date. The fabric carries its centuries lightly, a tithe barn and a dovecote among the additions, and the guest book of the modern era reads like a century of headlines: Churchill and Eisenhower are said to have conferred here, with Elizabeth Taylor and Cary Grant among later visitors. A secret tunnel to the priory completes the storybook, and unusually for such tales, this one is documented.

Stay here if: you want the English share of this list in deep countryside an hour from London, with low beams and an open fire. Ask for: a room in the original inn rather than the cottages, and a table by the hearth.

The qualifier, honestly: "oldest hotel in the UK" is a claim, not a settled verdict; the Angel and Royal below and others contest it, and an old founding date is not the same as an unbroken run. Rooms in a 12th-century frame are characterful but uneven, and weekends fill with weddings.

Source: The Olde Bell; Wikipedia.

On the old Great North Road, the Angel and Royal traces its hostelry to the Knights Templar in 1203, with a house of lodging on the site since the 11th century. Its great anchor is a court, not a guest: in 1213, two years before he sealed Magna Carta, King John held court within these walls. The "Royal" was added in 1866 after a visit from the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, and the carved stone frontage that Historic England dates to the late 14th century still announces the inn to the street. Few houses in England can set a reigning king's court against their founding.

Stay here if: you want the medieval article with documented royalty rather than legend, on a drive up England's historic spine. Ask for: one of the named, characterful front rooms over the high street, where the old facade is.

The qualifier, honestly: "England's oldest inn" is reputed, not proven, and shares the title with several rivals; the present building is largely 14th-century and later, not 1203. Grantham is a working market town rather than a destination, so come for the house, not the setting.

Source: The Angel and Royal; Wikipedia.

The town council of Soest founded the Pilgrim Haus in 1304 as a hospice for travelers walking the long road to Santiago de Compostela, and seven centuries later it still lets rooms behind walls a metre thick. Its later history is a small chronicle of German trades: sold to Thomas Merckelbach in 1613, taken over by the Bodecker family who distilled brandy and brewed beer on the premises, and since 2008 in the hands of the Beck family, who completed a careful renovation in 2016. Few inns can trace their purpose so directly to the medieval pilgrim, and fewer still keep serving him.

Stay here if: you want the oldest inn in Westphalia, antique furnishings and a serious kitchen on a quiet old-town lane. Ask for: a room upstairs in the historic house, then dinner in the timbered restaurant below.

The qualifier, honestly: the claim is regional, oldest in Westphalia, not in Germany, and the house is modest in scale; this is an intimate historic inn, not a grand hotel. Soest is a charming detour rather than a marquee stop, which is rather the point.

Source: Wikipedia; Tripadvisor.

The house began in the service of the church: an Augustinian monastery kept its cloister guesthouse here as far back as 1323, and no earlier lodging is recorded in Interlaken. In 1491 Louis Ross renovated it into a proper inn and gave it a coat of arms, two horses and two alpine ibexes, that still sits on the south facade. For generations the building doubled as the administrative seat of the Bernese Oberland, with a first-floor room kept as a court. Mendelssohn and Lord Byron both passed beneath its sign on the grand tour of the Alps; today it is a renovated four-star of fifty-nine rooms beside the Japanese garden.

Stay here if: you want the Swiss entry on this list as a comfortable modern base for the Jungfrau region, history without sacrificing a proper hotel. Ask for: a quieter garden-side room, and dinner at the in-house Restaurant Taverne.

The qualifier, honestly: 1323 is the guesthouse; the inn proper dates from 1491, and the claim is "among the oldest in Switzerland," not the single oldest. Renovation has modernized much of the interior, so come for continuity of place rather than untouched medieval fabric.

Source: Hotel Interlaken, history; Wikipedia.

The "Golden Stag" appears in Salzburg's archives in 1407, the first mention of an inn at this address on the Getreidegasse, a few doors from the house where Mozart was born. Caspar Beichtner became its first fully licensed innkeeper in 1596, and the deer crest has presided over the place ever since, leaping across crockery, fabrics and the carved furniture that still fills it. Its modern incarnation dates to 1948, when it was raised into the refined, antique-furnished house that now flies under Marriott's Luxury Collection: seventy rooms, a hunting-lodge sensibility, and a guest list of presidents, musicians and festival royalty drawn by the Salzburg stage.

Stay here if: you want age and genuine five-star comfort in one address, in the best position in Salzburg's old town for the Festival. Ask for: a room in the historic house facing the Getreidegasse, then dinner in the panelled restaurant.

The qualifier, honestly: 1407 is the first record of an inn on the spot; the hotel you check into was largely shaped in 1948 and refreshed since, so the antiquity is of place, not of the rooms. Luxury Collection rates and old-town footfall on the Getreidegasse are both firmly of this century.

Source: Marriott, official; Famous Hotels.

It closes the list as the grandest founding of all. After their own pilgrimage, the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, endowed the Gran Hospital Real in 1499 to shelter the pilgrims arriving footsore at Santiago; construction ran past 1501 and produced a Gothic-Renaissance palace of four cloisters on the Plaza del Obradoiro, shoulder to shoulder with the cathedral. For four and a half centuries it healed and housed travelers who showed their Compostela; in 1954 it became the flagship of Spain's Parador network, and a pilgrim's privilege survives in spirit, with a handful of credentialed pilgrims still offered meals each day. Few hotels open onto a more storied square.

Stay here if: you want the most magnificent room on this page and the end of the Camino de Santiago outside your door, in a five-star Parador inside a 1499 palace. Ask for: a room overlooking a cloister or the Obradoiro, the better to feel the centuries.

The qualifier, honestly: the 1499 founding was as a hospital and hospice; it became a hotel in 1954, so "one of the oldest hotels in the world" describes an unbroken tradition of hospitality rather than five centuries of paying guests. As Santiago's headline address it stays busy, and a monument-hotel asks you to accept some quirks of an ancient plan.

Source: Paradores, official; Wikipedia.