What’s the buzz? In a city defined by its stately noblesse, the Palace Hotel is an icon of Madrid grandeur. The Spanish capital has been shaped over the centuries by kings and dukes, generals and cardinals. But the 112-year-old Palace has just had an overhaul designed to highlight another side of the city: its history of avant-garde art and literature.
The building is a metropolitan giant with 470 rooms. It was the first hotel in Spain to boast en-suite bathrooms. The €90mn refurb was about bringing its soul back. At its revitalised heart is an Art Nouveau dome, with light pouring through its stained glass, that rises high above a circular bar set in a winter garden. During the dark days of Spain’s civil war, the hotel served as a hospital and this area was its operating theatre. But during the Movida madrileña, a punky countercultural movement that sprang up after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, it was a venue for legendary parties.
Its renovation means a leap up the fanciness scale. The pragmatic old Westin Palace Hotel — run under franchise by Marriott — emerged glistening last week as a new member of the same group’s Luxury Collection.
Location, location, location The Palace is as central as a Madrid institution can get. It sits at one corner of the sweeping Paseo del Prado, one of Europe’s first tree-lined urban promenades, and opposite its great rival the Mandarin Oriental Ritz, a more aristocratic place. Although you don’t hear many madrileños use the phrase, the tourism industry calls this stretch of town the Paisaje de la Luz — the Landscape of Light — and it contains a stunning concentration of art and nature. The Palace is just a few minutes’ walk from Madrid’s three great art museums, as well as the less visitable army and navy headquarters and a cluster of ministries. Close by are the botanical gardens and the manicured Retiro park, a magnificent exception in a city that tends to have more affinity with concrete than trees.
Checking in Guests walk through the Palace’s giant arched doorway into an airy old-world atrium of brown mottled marble and wood panelling. A chandelier hangs overhead and the check-in desks are nestled discreetly into the walls on either side. It feels a bit like arriving in the early 1900s — and that is the point. The renovators wanted to bring back the ambience they saw in black-and-white photographs of the hotel when it opened. They started the overhaul in June 2023 and managed to keep the business open throughout.
The presence of the Palace’s owner, Archer Hotel Capital, is marked by just one small regulatory notice. Otherwise the walls are adorned with artwork. There are medieval Flemish tapestries downstairs. And upstairs the green-and-burgundy corridors are lined with funky paintings from interior designer Lázaro Rosa-Violán, inspired by past hotel regulars including Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí. In the rooms fusty old carpets have been stripped away. Now nature abounds, whether in Belle Époque gold-leaf wall lights, forest tapestries above bed heads, or a vintage botanical poster painted on floor-to-ceiling shower tiles. The renovation even means that the towels have got plumper.
What to do? Top of many visitors’ lists are the three museums of the “golden triangle of art”: the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza. For second-hand books, visitors can browse the down-home stalls lining the Cuesta de Moyano, and for a more grungy shop there’s the Rastro flea market on Sundays. The Palace runs tours of the Barrio de las Letras, the Literary Quarter, whose twisting 16th-century streets contrast with the Paris-style avenues that came later. Flamenco shows and opera at the Teatro Real are popular too. And in this 20-minute city, where a taxi can get you almost anywhere in that time, it’s easy to tour Real Madrid’s revamped, spaceship-like stadium. Match tickets are harder to get, but ask the concierge.
What about the food and drink? The bar beneath the dome is also the dining room, which ensures a bubbly conviviality at meal times. The food is Spanish, but a step up from classic tavern fare. Our leek with romesco sauce and roasted onions was as exquisite as the tuna tartare with caviar. A pork fillet served with apple purée had just the right consistency, but a humdrum entrecôte was disappointingly tough.
An alternative for drinks is the Palace’s charming 27 Club — a speakeasy-style bar named for the Generation of 1927, an influential group of bohemian poets who frequented the hotel, among them Federico García Lorca, Vicente Aleixandre and Luis Cernuda. It serves a “Hemingway” negroni and is as cosy as a manor house library, but sadly it was not insulated from the dance music thumping out of the hotel sound system.
Other guests High-rolling Americans dominate. They account for 40-50 per cent of the guests at the Palace and the city’s other top-end hotels, including young couples, retirees and business people tacking leisure time on to their work trips. In the bustle of the lobby on a recent Saturday evening, American gents in dad jeans and comfortable sneakers brushed shoulders with Spanish guests heading to a wedding reception, the immaculate women wearing sweeping dresses and flowers in their hair.
The damage King-bed rooms start at €550. Suites are €2,200 or more.
Elevator pitch Boho luxe with an artsy twist.
Barney Jopson was a guest of the Palace Hotel Madrid (marriott.com). He is the FT’s Spain and Portugal correspondent, based in Madrid
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