The incomparable Wentworth by the Sea Hotel (a Marriott Hotel and Spa) in New Castle, pictured above, long the Grande Dame of New Hampshire Seacoast hotels, had fallen into disrepair in about the 100th year of its life, and closed in the late 1980s.   It was very nearly demolished in the 1990s, only to be saved and beautifully restored to Marriott standards, and brought back to life in 2003 by Ocean Properties, a very capable, Portsmouth-based operator of upscale hotels and resorts from Bar Harbor to Key West.    (MAP) 

This historic hotel was once inhabited by well-heeled guests who would arrive for the summer with their steamer trunks, on steamships from New York City, and it was the host to both the Russian and Japanese delegations while the Treaty of Portsmouth (for which Theodore Roosevelt was awarded a Nobel Prize) that was negotiated and signed in 1905, ending the Russo-Japanese war.  

Today, the hotel is inhabited in the summer by equally well-heeled guests, some of whom arrive from all over the world on yachts that are moored at the adjacent marina (but mostly in their cars from Boston, New York and Philadelphia). 

The deluxe, 160-room resort, which still has a palpable grand hotel feel, is perched at one end of New Castle (about a five-minute drive from downtown Portsmouth), and features many guestrooms with Atlantic Ocean and Back Cove views, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a tennis court, and two exceptional restaurants, Salt, the hotel’s elegant main dining room, and its seasonal restaurant, Latitudes, one of New Hampshire’s top five restaurants.