The Fife Arms Is the Art-Filled Scottish Highlands Hotel That Offers Year-Round Delight

Speaking of Queen Victoria, if the name Braemar sounds familiar at all, it’s likely due to the area’s deep-seated royal connections. Just 10 minutes up the road you’ll find Balmoral Castle, the summer estate beloved by British royals from the Victorian era all the way up to the present day. (And if that weren’t enough of a royal stamp of approval, The Fife Arms had its ribbon cut in 2019 by King Charles and Camilla themselves.)

Yet the atmosphere is anything but fusty. What appears behind the check-in desk as a bookshelf stacked with colorful tomes is in fact where you’ll find the room keys, with each accommodation matched to its own literary theme; this was all explained by the endlessly obliging local staff of ghillies, a Gaelic word for hunting or fishing guides that has here been repurposed to refer to the concierge. (However, they will help you arrange a hunting or fishing trip too, should you wish.)

I was led up the sweeping oak staircase to the first floor, and into one of the rooms inspired by local Scottish culture—more specifically, the natural wonders of the hotel’s surroundings, with a sentence from a poem about pine cones inscribed on the roughly hewn wooden headboard. The vibe was a kind of riotous, maximalist Highlands fantasia, with tartan rugs and deep green velvet curtains and a gorgeous wallpaper with silhouettes of trees in the forest covering every wall. (Think Liberace of the Glen.) It’s immensely stylish, yes, but also has that all-important thing: soul.