1. HI PIGEON POINT LIGHTHOUSE
Pescadero, California — Beside a working lighthouse on the Pacific
Built in 1872, Pigeon Point is one of the tallest lighthouses on the American Pacific coast, rising 35m above a rugged stretch of shoreline about 80km south of San Francisco. The hostel occupies the former keeper’s quarters, giving guests the rare opportunity to spend the night alongside a working lighthouse. More than 150 years after it first began guiding ships along the California coast, the site remains one of the most distinctive places to stay in the US. A cliffside jacuzzi overlooking the Pacific only adds to the appeal.
2. HOSTEL CELICA
Ljubljana, Slovenia — Art in a former prison
Ljubljana has a growing reputation as one of Europe’s most charming small capitals — all Baroque facades, riverside cafés and a castle on the hill. But few buildings reflect the city’s turbulent past more vividly than Hostel Celica. Built in 1883 under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the imposing brick structure later served as a military prison under Yugoslavia, remaining in use until Slovenia’s independence in 1991. When the prison was abandoned and earmarked for demolition, local artists and activists campaigned to save it, eventually transforming it into a cultural centre and hostel. Each of the 20 cells was handed to a different artist to redesign: the results include sleeping lofts suspended inside steel cages; walls covered floor-to-ceiling in mosaic; and beds framed by hand-painted murals, all still behind the original iron bars. Lonely Planet named it the world’s hippest hostel; Rough Guides included it among the 25 ultimate places to stay on the planet.
3. CAVELAND
Santorini, Greece — Wine caves turned hostel rooms
Most visitors to Santorini experience the island from above — perched on the caldera rim at Oia, watching the famous sunset. Caveland offers a different perspective. Set inside an 18th-century wine estate in the quieter village of Karterados, its former wine-storage chambers and workers’ quarters have been transformed into dormitories and private rooms, with rooms dug directly into the volcanic pumice. This ancient technique was a structural choice, since Santorini’s seismic history made building downward safer than building up. The result is rooms that stay cool in summer without air conditioning, walls that are soft and pale as chalk, and a silence underground that the clifftop villages, packed with tourists, never achieve. The black sand beaches of Perissa and Perivolos are minutes away, and the archaeological site of Ancient Thera sits on the mountain above.
4. GARDINER HOUSE
Dublin, Ireland — Dorm beds in a Victorian convent chapel
Established in 1821 to educate poor Catholic children, Gardiner House spent nearly two centuries as a convent and school run by Dublin’s Sisters of Charity. Today, guests can book the “Chapel Experience” — dorm beds inside the building’s former Victorian chapel, where original stained-glass windows still cast coloured light across the room. The convent finally closed in 2016 after 186 years of service, but traces of the site’s past remain throughout. Guests can still see the original donation boxes, holy water font — and a particularly charming detail on the back staircase: a row of wooden knobs fitted to the bannister to stop schoolchildren sliding down it.
5. BOOK AND BED
Tokyo, Japan — Sleep inside a bookshop
There can be no more delightful premise for a book lover than this: a bookshop where, instead of leaving at closing time, you spend the night. Book and Bed launched in Tokyo in 2015 and has since expanded to Kyoto and Osaka. Guests sleep directly inside floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves packed with thousands of volumes in Japanese and English — the books are real and available to read through the night if sleep doesn’t come. For around ¥5,000 (about R515) per night in one of the world’s most expensive cities, it offers something no conventional hotel can: the irreplaceable pleasure of falling asleep surrounded by books, in a city that takes both design and reading seriously. If you do not want to spend the night, you can book a daytime slot to use the lounge and read for about ¥900 (about R92) per hour.
6. GENERATOR VENICE
Giudecca Island, Italy — Venice from the other side
Generator Venice occupies a vast former grain warehouse on Giudecca, the long island across the Giudecca Canal from St Mark’s Square. Part of the international Generator hostel group, the property is housed in a late-19th-century building dating from the days when Venice was still a busy commercial port. The conversion has retained its soaring ceilings, huge arched windows and industrial scale. The result is a space unlike the ornate palazzi normally associated with the city: all brick, steel and warehouse proportions. Its waterfront position provides views across the lagoon to St Mark’s Basilica and the Doge’s Palace.
7. STAYOKAY HEEMSKERK
North Holland, Netherlands — A medieval moated castle with hostel prices
A 13th-century moated castle is not an obvious candidate for a youth hostel. And yet Slot Assumburg, a medieval fortress in the North Holland dunes between Amsterdam and the North Sea coast, is precisely that — complete with a grand entrance hall, turret rooms, a drawbridge and, crucially, a turret bar where guests can drink at hostel prices in a room that has been standing since the Middle Ages.
Part of the HI-affiliated Stayokay network, it completed a full renovation in April 2026. The Keukenhof Gardens, the largest flower garden in the world, are nearby, as are the historic town of Haarlem and the beaches of Zandvoort, a stunning 9km stretch of white sand along the North Sea coast, often referred to as the “Beach of Amsterdam”.
8. DOCK INN
Warnemünde, Germany — Shipping containers in a working Baltic harbour
Germany’s first hostel built entirely from upcycled shipping containers sits in the working harbour of Warnemünde, the Baltic Sea port town at the mouth of the Warnow River. The containers are stacked, painted and reconfigured into dorms and private rooms, but the industrial logic of the place is never disguised — guests fall asleep to the sounds of the harbour, with container cranes and Baltic ferries visible from the windows. Warnemünde itself is a Baltic beach town of white sandy beaches, traditional fishermen’s cottages and a lighthouse dating to 1898. The medieval city of Rostock, with its Gothic red-brick churches and one of Germany’s oldest universities, is a short tram ride away.
9. CASA EN EL AGUA
San Bernardo Islands, Colombia — A hostel on stilts above a coral reef
Two hours by boat from Cartagena, through the Caribbean Sea and into the Rosario and San Bernardo Corals National Park, Casa en el Agua sits on concrete stilts above the shallow water of the archipelago — quite literally in the ocean, with no land beneath it. It is the only hostel in the San Bernardo Islands, runs entirely on solar power, and operates as an eco-ethnotourism project in direct partnership with the inhabitants of Islote, one of the most densely populated small islands on Earth. The hammocks hang over open water and as soon as you step off the deck you are swimming over a coral reef.
10. CURIOCITY BACKPACKERS
Johannesburg — Struggle-era history in the heart of Maboneng
During the apartheid years, the building that now houses Curiocity Johannesburg was occupied by Pacific Press, a printing company that produced material for the ANC and the Black Sash — work that carried serious personal risk at a time when the security forces were watching. The ground-floor bar is called The Hideout. Today it is a backpackers in the heart of Maboneng, with a rooftop bar and a programme of walking tours, cycling excursions and Soweto day trips.
