How we ask, and what the answers rest on

Questions reach us in two ways. Readers write in with something they want settled about a building, and we come back from a trip with something we could not explain on the spot. Eighteen is the number of questions we can keep checked at one time, so the list stays at eighteen and a new question has to displace an old one.

We do not ask which hotel is the best, whether a stay is worth the money, or what a night costs. Those questions cannot be settled from published material, and the answers would go stale within a season. Our questions are about structure, site and origin, so a reader can hold the answer against the building.

Every answer opens with the name of the hotel and the fact that settles the question. No introduction, no paragraph about the century first. If the question asks which hotel was dug rather than built, the first sentence says which one and says that it was dug.

Three paragraphs follow that opening. The short answer settles the question. The long answer explains how the building came to be that way and how the arrangement works. The third paragraph carries what complicates the answer: a second address that is often confused with the first, a condition of the site, something a reader would want to know before deciding.

The practical footnote is preparation, not criticism. It names the one thing worth arranging or checking before arrival, and it exists because these are working hotels with real approaches, stairs, ferries and roads. It is never a complaint, and we do not invent faults.

The line reading answer checked gives the month and year when we last went back to the material an answer rests on. It is not a claim that nothing has changed since; it is a statement of when we last looked.

Our material is published: hotel and operator websites, architectural and design publications, conservation records and reporting. We write in our own words rather than repeating those sources. We do not publish accounts of our own stays, and nothing on this site should be read as a report on a night spent in any of these hotels.

What we leave out is as fixed as what we include. No prices, no star classifications, no scores, no opening hours or schedules, no booking, no paid placement and no affiliate links. Nobody can buy an entry or buy a change to one. Hotels are welcome to send corrections, and a factual correction is made whoever sends it.

An international guide includes Casino Hotels because those four buildings answer the same kind of question as the rest: what they were built from, what ground they occupy, what water is beside them. The gaming floor is not described, not assessed and not the reason any of them appears. Casinos are for adults only, and the age depends on where you are.