Why Madrid is Spain‘s next big hotel hotspot
A crop of lavish new and reimagined lodgings has transformed Madrid and nudged Barcelona out of the spotlight.
Discover the world’s latest and greatest luxe lodgings in issue 8 of Travel + Luxury magazine, available online and in the newspaper on Friday, 26 August.
The sunset scene on the rooftop at Madrid’s buzziest new hotel feels like another world. A well-heeled crowd sips Mojitos and grazes on Peruvian cuisine among olive trees and a perfect lawn. Brazilian funk drifts from the speakers; swifts swoop and soar above the towers and spires of the old town. In the far distance rise the peaks of the Sierra de Madrid. But from the edge of the infinity pool, the terracotta-tiled roof of Descalzas Reales monastery, founded in the 16th century and a trove of Spanish art, lies so close you wonder what the cloistered nuns inside must be thinking of it all.
The scene at the Madrid Edition is noteworthy in other ways, too. Though not exactly a stranger to the high life, until quite recently Madrid has been unfamiliar with luxury at this exalted level. While other big European cities powered ahead in the high-end stakes, and even low-powered Lisbon moved up several gears, the Spanish capital seemed permanently stuck in the slow lane. Not even Madrid’s impressive cultural firepower – its world-class art museums such as the Prado and Thyssen-Bornemisza, its sizzling culinary scene, and its top-end retail brands – had succeeded in catapulting it into the premier league. As Inmaculada Ranera of hospitality-sector estate agents Christie & Co puts it: “Madrid had all the ingredients to become a luxury destination – culture, architecture, gastronomy – but was never recognised as such.”
All that began to change just three years ago when a wave of “ultra-luxury” hotels started to open their doors across the city, all operating at a level of opulence that fairly took the breath away – proving Madrid could finally hold its own with the likes of London, Paris and Milan. First came the Four Seasons, in September 2020, which turned a swathe of downtown real estate into a fortress of luxe; then the Ritz, a 1910 classic remade by Mandarin Oriental, and Rosewood’s stunning revamp of the modernist Villa Magna. The latest of the current crop of super-smart hotels, newly unveiled on an old-town square within minutes of the Puerta del Sol, is the Madrid Edition, conceived with originality and flair by Ian Schrager – he of the legendary Studio 54.
Two questions might arise: why did it not happen sooner? And why is it that you wait for ages for a fabulous hotel to open in Madrid and, as with London buses, four or five come along at the same time? One explanation is the tsunami of investment that has been rolling into Madrid over the past decade, much of it from Latin America. The answer to the second question, meanwhile, also explains the first: big money, like nature, abhors a vacuum. It only took one international hotel chain to announce a major project in the Spanish capital for the others to sit up and take notice.
Even at the end of the last decade the upper reaches of the city’s hotel landscape had a very different look about them. Madrid was undoubtedly worse off in hotel terms than Barcelona, Spain’s second city but the country’s prime tourist destination, which since the 1992 Olympic Games has had five-star hotels in rich profusion. The poshest hotels in Madrid were mostly run by local firms rather than by blue-chip global hospitality companies – there was the splashy designer bling of the Urban, the discreet bourgeois charm of the Santo Mauro. Characterful propositions like the Urso, Pablo Carrington’s delicious townhouse hotel in the chic Salesas district, waved a flag for discretion and good taste. But the five-star sector was still typified by the Ritz and the Palace (now a Westin), two grandes dames both dating from the early years of the 20th century, staring at each other haughtily across the Paseo del Prado.
If there’s an obvious game-changer here it must be the Four Seasons. Indeed, rarely has a new hotel had such a sweeping impact on its immediate surroundings. The Canadian group’s first Spanish venture formed part of the €600 million-plus Centro Canalejas project, which has essentially refigured this downtown zone into an enclave of affluence. As well as the hotel itself this massively ambitious development, which melds together several former banking halls and a newspaper office, offers private residences, a food hall, and a commercial gallery pitched at the high-net-worth shopper, with Cartier, Rolex and Hermès among its 45 retail outlets. Standing on a corner site where Calle de Alcalá meets Calle de Sevilla, the new hotel has the look of a great ocean liner sailing into the city with all guns blazing.
As it turned out, however, the top-down revolution in Madrid was only just beginning. Within a few months the Four Seasons would be joined by a hotel that for sheer glamour would prove to be every inch its rival. One of César Ritz’s original three European properties, the Madrid Ritz had become a fusty and antiquated shadow of its former self when the Hong Kong-based Mandarin Oriental group began work on a €100 million-plus refit destined to give the old place new dazzle and swagger. The result plays with traditional elements of the grand hotel, spinning them with 21st-century style and a properly Spanish sense of fun. Sumptuousness and silky service are to be expected, but the keynote here, nonetheless, is intelligent and cultivated luxury. The Palm Court, now with its glass roof reinstated after an 80-year hiatus, is a distillation of Belle Époque elegance. At Deessa restaurant, whose white-and-gold pillared space has instantly become Madrid’s most gorgeous dining room, chef Quique Dacosta’s 14-course degustación flits from oysters in celery aspic and turbot in sherry sauce to hare à la royale and peach Melba.
Refurbs outnumber new builds among Madrid’s phalanx of new lodgings, but even the makeovers are often so transformative that little remains of the original. An example being the Rosewood Villa Magna, which opened in October last year after being retooled by Melbourne-based Bar Studio. Built in the 1970s to a boxy modernist design, the Villa Magna was an institution among upper-class Madrileños, who only had to cross the Paseo de la Castellana to reach it from the highfalutin streets of Salamanca. Its new incarnation takes a step back from grand-hotel style, which, after all, other Madrid hotels do more coherently, into something intimate, friendly and sleekly chic.
Despite its position on one of the capital’s busiest thoroughfares, the Villa Magna has all the wraparound comforts of an urban resort. Well-to-do Madrileños still make their way here, but are now drawn by the clubby ambience of the lobby, the coffee and pastries at ground-floor pasteleria Flor y Nata, and the restaurant Amós where chef Jesús Sánchez offers a refined take on the cooking of his native Cantabria on Spain’s north coast.
Beyond the elegant boulevards and tree-lined avenues, central Madrid is a warren of narrow streets in which convents and palaces jostle with tenement blocks, sleepy squares and rumbustious open-air markets like the Rastro. The streets around Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol, once the province of old-fashioned grocers, guitar workshops and makers of Spanish hats and fans, are finally showing the effects of the city’s great leap forward. Upscale conversions of historic properties, often aimed at the deep pockets of rich Mexicans and Venezuelans, are popping up all over town. Of the 22 private residences attached to the Four Seasons, for instance, including a penthouse priced at €10 million, all were snapped up within weeks of completion.
In the past, up-market hotel brands tended to steer clear of the old town itself, preferring to concentrate their energies on the well-upholstered neighbourhoods outside Madrid’s historic nucleus. Recent developments have up-ended that tendency. The city’s newest smart hotels are more and more intrepid in their push towards the epicentre of Old Madrid. Take the Gran Hotel Inglés, a thoroughgoing revision of a 19th-century townhouse bringing back five-star quality to an old-town zone which, like the hotel itself, had been in decline for years. When it opened as a hotel in 1886, the Inglés was the first place in town to offer mod cons at the level of Paris or London, and a fashionable crowd of bullfighters, flamenco dancers and literati flocked to the new establishment. Following the relaunch in 2018, the hotel’s magnificent lobby, conceived as a library with book-lined shelves, outsize chandeliers and artworks reflecting the neighbourhood’s theatrical connections, is once again a popular venue for the city’s artistic demi-monde. You might see a famous Spanish actress sipping a Negroni at the spectacular circular bar – yet the Inglés’s cultured vibe clearly favours discretion over display.
There’s a sense that right now, rather like its world-beating football team, this is a city on a winning streak. While Barcelona had a “bad pandemic” and saw its tourist economy collapse (albeit temporarily), Madrid weathered the storm relatively well. Among a series of incremental improvements to its quality of life is the newly redesigned Plaza de España. The great square is now free of traffic and planted with trees, and no less than three new five-star hotels – Riu Plaza de España, Barceló Torre de Madrid, and VP Plaza España Design – stand around the edges of the plaza. Further up Gran Via, beyond Callao, is Cristiano Ronaldo’s Pestana CR7 hotel, where the rooftop bar scores highly even in a city where terrazas with panoramic views are practically par for the course.
And, remarkable as it may seem, there’s more where that came from. The pace of hotel-building in Madrid is unrelenting: a new JW Marriott, sited almost rashly within steps of the Four Seasons, was imminent as we went to press, while among the novelties slated for next year are a branch of Robert de Niro’s Nobu chain and a Philippe Starck-designed Brach (part of the French Evok group), both on the great white way of the Gran Via.
With every one of its new hotels Madrid receives another boost to its already febrile creative energy. The process suggests a rising curve, a crescendo of excellence, as each property attempts to raise the bar ever higher. The Madrid Edition, the newest kid on the block, may not be the best of the bunch – but then again it may be. Like the Four Seasons, the Edition occupies the former HQ of a bank, but there the comparison ends. This is no “heritage” property, and the hotel makes no pretence at integration into, or inspiration from, the cultural context in which it finds itself (even the restaurants are Mexican and Peruvian). It exists on its own terms, a contemporary grand hotel consecrated to the religion of design.
The long vaulted corridor leading into the building from an 18th-century carved granite portico, glowing along its length with a soft pinkish light, sets the tone. But if anything, the spiral staircase in the lower entrance hall makes for an even bigger wow factor. Resembling carved pearly-white stone, it stands dramatically alone in the wood-lined hall, curving gently upwards like some vast seashell.
Meanwhile, in the downstairs Jerónimo restaurant, helmed by Mexican chef Enrique Olvera, tropical colour plays against sober wood-panelled walls and huge statement ceiling lamps. On any given morning, moneyed Latin Americans along with politicians, fashion mavens, and clients hailing from the upper echelons of Spanish society can be seen partaking of huevos rancheros and corn tortillas. Beyond the plate-glass windows of the guest rooms – hermetic chambers of total whiteness – the brick-built 19th-century apartment blocks with their black-iron balconies and spooky mansard windows remind you that another Madrid, weathered and darkened by history, forms the backdrop to this exercise in 21st-century refinement. All told, the Edition may well be the most breathtaking hotel the city has ever seen. That is, until the next one comes along.
Madrid’s fab five
Four Seasons Hotel Madrid
Opened against all odds in the middle of a pandemic, this new-wave grand hotel offers what is very possibly Madrid’s swishest digs. Of the 200 rooms, 39 are suites. The 400-square-metre Royal Suite, which has its own gym and dining room, was once the office of Spanish banking magnate Mario Conde. At 1400 square metres, the spa is said to be the largest in Madrid. Andalusian chef Dani García’s Dani Brasserie (aim for a table on the amazing roof terrace) is worth a visit even if you’re not staying. Ditto the ritzy retail gallery Galería Canalejas – part of the hotel complex – with 45 shops, 13 restaurants and bars and a market with around 10 stalls. Rooms start at around $1,400.
Mandarin Oriental Ritz Madrid
Under its new Asian owners the Hotel Ritz, dating from 1910, has been revitalised with great respect and no expense spared. Exclusive guest experiences include an after-hours visit to the Museo del Prado or the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza – both just a few steps from the front door. A third of the 153 rooms are suites. The hotel’s gastronomic offering includes Deessa, Quique Dacosta’s flagship Madrid restaurant in its sensational dining room, and the gold-slathered cocktail bar Pictura featuring portraits of Spanish artisans. Rooms start at around $1,300.
Gran Hotel Inglés
First opened as a hotel in 1886, this downtown classic in the Barrio de las Letras stands on one of the first Madrid streets to have electric light. Now reopened as a 48-room urban hideaway, the Inglés is once more in the spotlight thanks, in part, to architect David Rockwell’s perfectly pitched Art Deco-inflected interiors. Within the building is a restaurant, Lobo, whose mirrored dining room and menu of trad Madrileño dishes reflect the hotel’s nostalgic ambience. A small but elegant spa, featuring plant-based products from chic French brand Sisley, completes the picture. Rooms start at around $550.
Rosewood Villa Magna
The Rosewood group’s first property in Spain radically overhauls a 1970s building on the site of the late aristocratic Palacio de Anglada. There’s a grown-up chic about Villa Magna’s 154 rooms with their noble woods and leather detailing. The exceptionally beautiful Sense spa and hammam use handmade organic products by Ayuna, Evidens and Ground. Within reach of the hotel are some of Madrid’s most stylish haunts: Bar Tomate, Ten Con Ten, Saddle, and the über-fashionable Aarde eatery. Or stay in for supper at Amós, an offshoot of the three Michelin-starred Cenador de Amós outside Santander. Breakfast here, at Las Brasas de la Castellana, is also a lavish pleasure (lobster tortilla, anyone?). Rooms start at around $1,200.
The Madrid Edition
In which British architect John Pawson, doyen of minimalism, and visionary US hotelier Ian Schrager join forces with the Marriott hotel empire to give Madrid its most sensational hotel in years. If the Edition’s 177 guest rooms, 21 suites and two penthouses are muted symphonies in white, the public spaces are alive with colour – an exception being the dark and clubby Punch Room bar (which will surely come into its own in the icy Madrid winter). Make time for a look at the hotel’s Limited Edition shop and its discerning selection of locally sourced items. Rooms start at around $1,000.
Is this the ultimate glamping tent?
It’s off-grid and eco-friendly but that doesn’t mean guests are deprived of creature comforts at this new addition to the accommodation scene.
10 things to do on Australia’s greatest road trip
There is so much more than just driving this legendary road and we have found where to stay, eat, the best wineries to visit and even where to watch horses swim in the sea.