This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
Madrid is booming. By certain measures, the city weathered the pandemic better than other European capitals, emerging to a head-spinning proliferation of new bars, restaurants and hotels. More than other Spanish cities, its centre is comprised of distinct neighbourhoods with their own mystique. Hilly, medieval Lavapiés is arty and polyglottic; the cobbled quarter of Las Letras sets flashy modern cocktail bars beside old taverns; while Salamanca is the place for high-end shopping. Spread across those dynamic barrios are hotels that feel like secrets, tucked behind great avenues or hidden inside beautiful 19th-century buildings.
1. Mandarin Oriental Ritz, Madrid
Best for fine dining
Built to host the growing European leisure class of the early 1900s, this marbled monument to luxury travel was originally styled by César Ritz himself. A sensitive refit in 2021 by French designer Dorothée Boissier has preserved its appeal to those who enjoy vintage Champagne around a grand piano, but the atmosphere is not remotely fusty. The garden terrace, gallery cocktail bar and glass-canopied Palm Court lounge feel vital to the high life of the city, and the pool area looks like a flooded ballroom, its chandelier reflected in the water. Guest rooms are piled with modern comforts over polished grandeur: canopy beds, oak floors, Dolomite stonework. The house cuisine is now especially stellar, with Extremaduran masterchef Quique Dacosta running two-Michelin-starred house restaurant Deessa, as well as designing the menus for room service, bar snacks and afternoon tea. Rooms from €1,100 (£920).
The Mandarin Oriental Ritz offers some of the best fine dining in Madrid and guest rooms piled with modern comforts.
Photograph by the Mandarin Oriental Ritz
2. Four Seasons Madrid
Best for modern luxury
Spain’s first Four Seasons occupies an entire block of the city centre, with seven heritage buildings carefully knocked together to make way for 200 maximally fancy guest rooms, suites and apartments. And they’re in addition to a deluxe spa complex and a rooftop brasserie run by all-conquering Andalucian chef Dani García. Style and service are off the charts throughout, while an original bank vault door opens into Galeria Canalejas — a gleaming, in-house arrangement of beauty salons, luxury brand boutiques and aspirational food options. Ostentatiousness comes as part of the package, but the prime location also puts the visitor on the doorstep of some of Madrid’s oldest bars and vintage, family-owned ateliers. Rooms from £884.
3. Casual Madrid del Teatro
Best for drama queens
Affordable accommodation is rarely so flamboyant in Madrid. Every guest room in this century-old building (the former headquarters of the Spanish Music Union) is pretty wildly styled on a theatrical theme. Popular musicals predominate, with decals, murals and furnishings modelled on the particular aesthetic of, say, The Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables. Room 304 is all about Cats, while the smaller and inevitably classier Oscar Wilde room (409) has an outdoor terrace. A buffet breakfast is served on the roof and the location is optimal — it’s a few steps to Madrid’s most stylish cocktail bar (Salmon Guru) and its most venerable sherry bar (La Venencia). Rooms from €95 (£80).
4. Hotel Montera Madrid, Curio Collection
Best for skyline cocktails
Madrid’s main shopping street, the Gran Via, was conceived circa 1925 to compete with the world’s most beautiful avenues, and the former Metropolitan hotel was part of that design. Its lovely Paris-meets-Manhattan facade remains unchanged, while a recent interior overhaul recalls the stylings of a century ago, courtesy of designer-du-jour Lázaro Rosa-Violán and various artists (Miguel Caravaca’s mural runs the length of the glass lift shaft). Guest rooms are cool and quiet, even those with Juliet balconies above the city’s busiest block, and the rooftop bar is operated by neighbouring cocktail lounge Museo Chicote, an old haunt of Ernest Hemingway and Ava Gardener. Late drinks in the glow of vintage skycrapers can feel genuinely transportive. Rooms from €257 (£216).
Hotel Montera’s La Braserí restaurant serves late night drinks in a 1920s atmosphere.
Photograph by Montera Madrid
5. 7 Islas Hotel
Best for offbeat art & design
The three penthouses atop the 7 Islas have got to be the best-value stays in this city. Ten times cheaper than top-floor suites at many posher properties, each comes with its own private patio deck, sun lounger, yoga kit and singular vantage point over the honeyed slate rooftops of the Malasaña district — a dense and picturesque cluster of cultural diversions and nocturnal entertainments. Interiors were furnished by the idiosyncratic local Kikekeller studio, with lots of metal, leather and pleasing oddball touches (coat hooks shaped like baby hands). The lobby hosts rotating exhibits by local artists beside a fittingly creative bar and bistro. Rooms from €125 (£105).
6. The Hat
Best for groups
A pioneering kind of designer hostel, The Hat is a repurposed 19th-century mansion. There are hand-carved pine beds, wall murals by Spanish design studio Yembara, a biomass-based energy supply and a suntrap roof lounge and garden with a menu primed for hangover brunches and twilight sangria. Groups can book out private dorms or a four-person apartment, while the twins and doubles are solid options for low-cost city breaks. Rooms from €74 (£62); dorm beds from €20 (£17).
7. La Posada Del Dragón
Best for Old Madrid spirit
Cava Baja is a street-long banquet of taverns and tapas bars but it was once lined with inns known as posadas. This neo-posada was converted from a barn, grain store and soap factory in 2010. Original features include excavated relics visible through glass floor panels and a pretty interior courtyard. Guest rooms are themed on a moment from civic history: Arabesque doors and wall motifs reflecting Madrid’s Moorish foundations, or neon signs and photographic reminders of the post-Franco party scene of the 1980s. Rooms from €100 (£84).
8. Only You Boutique Hotel
Best for nights out
This boutique hotel strikes a neat balance between retro style and contemporary whimsy. The lobby walls are designed to resemble stacked suitcases; guest rooms have vintage maps and cute giraffe-print bathrobes. House bar El Padrino morphs from a traditional tavern and antique bookshop into a cocktail lounge with a certain clubby energy by night, and Only You is very much plugged into the energy of the surrounding Chueca district — the core of Madrid’s LGBTQ+ scene and epicentre of Pride Week parties. Rooms from €240 (£200).
Bless Hotel invites guests to watch the sunset on its rooftop bar, Picos Pardos Sky Lounge.
Photograph by Adolfo Gosálvez
9. Bless Hotel Madrid
Best for hedonism
Ibiza-based hotel group Palladium brings the island’s starry-eyed vigour to the Bless lobby, which buzzes even on a rainy Tuesday in February. Various partners have been invited to add their own panache to the food and drinks, with neighbouring sushi bar and supper club SLVJ also operating the hotel’s basement-level speakeasy. There’s a mini bowling lane down there, and an emerald pool up on the roof, where Picos Pardos Sky Lounge by Martini is the style-conscious Madrileño’s preferred place to watch the sunset flare off cocktail glasses. Parquet floors, hanging lamps and floral furnishings, as well as luscious guest rooms with fireplaces and free-standing bathtubs, seem to stir echoes of the Prohibition era into the age of TikTok. Rooms from €355 (£299).
10. Hotel Santo Mauro, Marriott Luxury Collection
Best for aristocratic airs
This is how, and where, the Duke of Santo Mauro used to live — an urban 1800s palace that sprawls across three buildings and a beautifully manicured garden at the edge of the city centre. Recent renovations by master decorator Lorenzo Castillo have been tastefully fitted around the original finery, from the striking iron-and-glass marquee entryway to gigantic fireplaces and courtyard fountains. The duke’s high-ceilinged salons are among the most gorgeous hotel spaces in all of Madrid: the Chinese Lounge, with its Oriental screens and lacquer cabinets, and the Red Room, which looks like a courtly parlour in a French painting from the Belle Époque. Dinner — a five-course menu by renowned Catalan chef Rafael Peña — is served in the original palace library, while brunch and afternoon tea can be taken outside on the garden terrace. Rooms from €700 (£590).
Published in the December 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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