Hotel Atlantic Hamburg

Rock musician Udo Lindenberg has lived permanently at the Hotel Atlantic since the 1990s — arriving one day with his guitar and simply never leaving. The hotel, which opened in 1909 as a luxury address for passengers of the transatlantic liners, has accepted this arrangement with characteristic North German equanimity. The building's grand white façade overlooking the Outer Alster lake has made it a Hamburg landmark, and its guest list over the decades reads like a diplomatic directory crossed with a rock festival programme. 221 rooms and a sense of institutional permanence that no amount of eccentric residencies can shake.