The Arizona Inn is Tucson's only hotel named one of the "Top 500 Hotels in the World 2011" by Travel + Leisure magazine.
The magazine praises the Arizona Inn's "14 sublimely private and controlled acres" that "deploy a succession of gardens crazed with flowers and trees, separated by little gates and laid out with the whimsy of an English estate."
"Afternoon tea is served in an immense library with dark oak tables and plenty of tempting books to borrow. Rooms are huge, furnished with mahogany," it continues. "Guests can take breakfast by the large but curiously private pool. The marmalade is made on the premises, thick, sweet, and rugged with peel."
The recognition coincides with the 80th anniversary of the Arizona Inn's opening by Isabella Greenway, Arizona's first congresswoman, on Dec. 18, 1930, said Patrick Cray, general manager of the hotel, at 2200 E. Elm St.
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"It's with heartfelt gratitude and a modicum of pride that the hotel, ever in the care of Isabella's family, quietly celebrates its eight decades of wonderful Tucson memories. Time marches on," Cray wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.