Planters Inn

Planters Inn

Walk through the entrance at Meeting and Market and the street noise drops into a garden courtyard, the surprise tucked behind Planters Inn's 1844 façade. This is South Carolina's only Relais & Châteaux hotel, a distinction none of Charleston's other properties can claim, and Travel + Leisure named it the country's top boutique hotel besides. The details back up the reputation: four-poster mahogany beds modeled on historic designs, silk drapery, working fireplaces, and private piazzas in select rooms, all opening onto that courtyard. Only sixty-four rooms across four floors, intimate by design, with personal service and English-speaking staff throughout. Downstairs, Peninsula Grill serves the notoriously good twelve-layer coconut cake that keeps turning up in write-ups, alongside a bar, a library, and a picnic area. A concierge handles the logistics: laundry, dry cleaning, tour bookings, a car to the airport. Breakfast runs sixteen dollars a head and valet parking thirty-four a day, worth knowing before check-in, along with the hundred-dollar daily deposit. The Shops at Charleston Place and King Street's boutiques are close enough to reach on foot, and the courtyard still feels removed from them once you're back inside. There's a conference hall and meeting rooms for business travelers, though the residential-style suites keep the whole place feeling more like a house than an office park. It won't suit someone chasing anonymity in a big resort chain, and the single on-site restaurant is by design, not a shortfall. For a traveler who wants Charleston's history explained by an actual building rather than a plaque, this corner has been doing exactly that since 1844. A garden courtyard hides behind Planters Inn's 1844 façade at Meeting and Market, home to South Carolina's only Relais & Châteaux hotel. Sixty-four rooms, four-poster beds, and Peninsula Grill's twelve-layer coconut cake make the case; skip it if you want anonymity in a big chain.