Few hotels in the world induce aesthetic delirium quite like The Fife Arms in Braemar, Scotland, where visual diversions abound – so many and so various – it’s nigh on impossible to know which way to look.

There’s a Lucian Freud portrait and Mark Bradford’s Steinway pianola (self-playing piano) in the lobby. Then a Gerhard Richter in the dining room. Advance to the drawing room, and what looks like a Pablo Picasso on the right wall, or at least a copy, is the original Mousquetaire Assis (1967) and would fetch in excess of US$30 million (S$40.5 million) plus at auction; on an opposite wall hangs an innocuous pencil and watercolour of a stag’s head – by an enthusiastic amateur more commonly known as Queen Victoria.