Heads on Beds: The Mansion Hotel, Shanghai

For all the burgeoning tower blocks in Shanghai, its French Concession, the old trading quarter run by colonial France, remains a charming low-rise neighbourhood of tree-lined avenues. Here a few small, intimate hotels have opened over the past 18 months. The most stunning is the Mansion Hotel, a gracious and spacious 1930s villa which has been fabulously renovated. This was once the clubhouse of Du Yue Sheng, aka “Big Ears Du”, one of the city’s wealthiest and most notorious gangsters, and the property has been beautifully refurbished to reflect a suitable sense of history – and luxury.

Off Duty: Chicago

Why? The speed of Chicago’s growth from a town in 1833 to the mid-continental hub for the emerging US railroad network less than 20 years later set the industrious tone for this vigorous lakeside city. The great new Midwest engine of commercial endeavour soon wore its wealth on its sleeve, using the opportunity afforded by the Great Fire of 1871 to redefine itself as the architectural template for America’s conurbations. This is the home of the first “real” steel-framed skyscraper, and Chicago’s industrialists went on to commission countless shrines to their capitalistic prowess. It soon became a centre for innovative construction and a showcase for the extraordinary talents of architects including Daniel Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Inside Business Travel

Heads on Beds: Grand Hotel Europe, St Petersburg

Checking into a St Petersburg legend

The man whose business is travel: air travel is changing the way that engineers change the world

Air travel does more than allow you to swap continents in a few hours, transact business and see the world. It is also changing the way that engineers change the world.

Off Duty: Hong Kong

Some things old and some things new in one of Asia’s most exciting cities

Paris's signature sights look fabulous when floodlit at night

Big Night Out: Paris

Business is over for the day. Ian McCurrach tells you where to paint the town rouge

Taxi nightmares set travellers' tongues wagging

Talking Point: Taxis

A cab ride in a far-flung location can be a life-saver - or cause the whole of your life to flash before your eyes. Frank Partridge finds out what can happen to business travellers who respond to a variation of the universal question: "Where to, guv?"