The ten best luxury hotels in Madrid

A 1912 grand hotel rebuilt for about 100 million euros and reopened in March 2025

Start with the name, because half the internet still has it wrong. This hotel opened on Plaza de las Cortes in 1912, traded for years as the Westin Palace, closed for a two year restoration costing about 100 million euros, and reopened in March 2025 as The Palace, a Luxury Collection Hotel. Booking sites are still catching up, and you will find listings, photographs and complaints attached to it that describe a hotel that no longer exists. Read the dates on anything you are shown.

What came back is the best set of public rooms in Madrid. The stained glass and iron dome by Eduardo Ferres i Puig has been fully restored, and La Cupula sits underneath it serving from breakfast until late. The old Museo Bar is now 27 Club, named for the Spanish poets of the Generation of 27. The 470 rooms, 50 of them suites, were rebuilt with wallpapers hand painted to designs taken from the Retiro and bathroom mosaics drawn from the Royal Botanical Gardens. The restoration team catalogued and reused original elements rather than ordering replacements, including the dome, the facade and the glass palm tree chandelier in the lobby.

The advice here is about wings. A 1912 building of this size has good rooms and dim ones, and the split is geographic rather than by category. Ask for the Plaza de las Cortes or Carrera de San Jeronimo fronts, which have the light and the view; the inner rooms are dark and priced as though they are not. Eat breakfast at La Cupula before half past eight or you will queue behind half of Madrid, because the room now trades as a destination in its own right.

Two honest problems. This is the largest luxury hotel in central Madrid by a distance, and it behaves like it: the lobby, the lifts and the dome are busy from mid morning, and arrival at a check in desk serving 470 rooms is not a personal experience. And there is still no swimming pool, in a hotel that just spent 100 million euros and a city that reaches 33C in July. Its TripAdvisor score of 4.4 across 5,373 reviews is the joint lowest here, and most of those reviews are describing the previous hotel. For the position, three to five minutes from the Prado and two from the Thyssen, I would take it anyway.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• Three to five minutes from the Prado and two from the Thyssen
• Reopened March 2025, so the rooms are new behind a 1912 front
• The restored stained glass dome is the best hotel interior in Madrid
• The honest drawback
• No swimming pool, and the restoration did not add one
• 470 rooms, so the lobby and lifts are busy from mid morning

Two minutes from the Prado's Velazquez door, with the best garden of any hotel in the city

Alfonso XIII wanted a hotel grand enough for visiting royalty and did not much care what it cost, which is how Madrid got this building in 1910 to designs by Charles Mewes and Luis de Landecho. It closed in 2018, went through a restoration of roughly 103 million dollars, and reopened in April 2021 with 167 rooms and suites and interiors by Gilles and Boissier. The work recovered detail rather than inventing it: the painted sky ceiling in one of the suites was found, not commissioned.

Quique Dacosta runs every outlet in the building, which is rarer than it sounds and shows up in places you would not expect, room service included. Deessa is the fine dining room. Palm Court sits under the glazed rotunda for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea. Pictura handles cocktails. And El Jardin del Ritz, in the garden, has turned into a fixture of the Madrid dining calendar in its own right rather than a hotel terrace with parasols. There is a spa with treatment rooms and a fitness centre, and no pool.

Book the view or do not book at all. Deluxe rooms start near 30 square metres, which is modest for 700 dollars, and the value climbs steeply and obviously as you move to the Prado facing and garden facing categories. The double glazing on the Paseo del Prado side genuinely works, so do not let a noise worry push you inwards. Plaza de la Lealtad 5 puts the Prado's Velazquez entrance two to three minutes away, the Thyssen five and the Reina Sofia about twelve, with Banco de Espana metro three minutes off. If you want the garden to yourself, take breakfast out there rather than dinner.

The drawbacks are both about what you are paying for. There is no swimming pool at one of the two highest starting rates in this guide, which in a landlocked city at 33C in July is a real omission rather than a quibble. And the garden, the single best thing here, is shared with a public restaurant that books out, so on a warm evening the hotel's quietest asset is its busiest room. The score is 4.5 from 325 reviews. Take a Prado facing room, eat at Deessa once, and it is the most complete address in Madrid.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• Two to three minutes from the Prado's Velazquez entrance
• Dacosta oversees all four outlets, so even breakfast is properly cooked
• The walled garden is the best outdoor room of any hotel in central Madrid
• The honest drawback
• No swimming pool at one of the two highest rates here
• Deluxe rooms start near 30 square metres, which is small for the money

The only full size hotel pool and spa in central Madrid, four minutes from Puerta del Sol

Seven historic buildings on the corner of Calle de Alcala and Calle de Sevilla, including the old Equitativa bank, were stitched into one hotel that opened in September 2020 as the first Four Seasons in Spain. Over 16,000 original architectural elements were catalogued and put back, the Casa Maumejean stained glass survives, and much of the banking hall detail is still in the two storey lobby. There are 200 rooms, 39 of them suites, plus a 2,000 piece art collection that includes large KAWS sculptures and a red Porsche Panamera as the house car.

This is the only hotel here with a wellness operation you could call serious. The spa runs to 1,450 square metres over four floors, the largest hotel spa in Spain, with eight treatment rooms, a couples suite, a 24 hour gym and a Rossano Ferretti salon. The swimming pool is 14 metres, indoors under a full length skylight, open from 7am to 9pm, with a sun terrace on the eighth floor beside it. Dani Garcia's Dani Brasserie is on the seventh floor with a terrace over the rooftops, Isa does modern Asian food, and El Patio occupies the bank's old operations courtyard.

One thing to get right, and one to know. Entry level rooms start at about 37 square metres and a lot of them face an internal courtyard, which is quiet, dark and poor value at this rate; ask for a higher floor looking over the rooftops towards Cibeles and pay the difference. The thing to know is that the pool is limited to guests aged twelve and over, so with small children this is not the family answer it looks like on paper. Book the Dani Brasserie terrace for sunset a week ahead, because outside guests fill it.

The real complaint is architectural. This is a hotel inside a shopping and residential complex and it reads that way from the pavement in. The entrance sequence is long, the lobby sits above a luxury mall, and the arrival never quite feels like arriving at a hotel. Puerta del Sol is four minutes away and the Prado twelve to fifteen, which is further from the art than the two above it. Its 4.5 from 466 reviews is a fair mark. Book it if you want a pool, a gym and a spa in the middle of the city. Nothing else here has all three.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• A 14 metre indoor pool open all year, and the largest hotel spa in Spain
• Four minutes on foot from Puerta del Sol
• Dani Brasserie and its rooftop terrace are worth the walk in themselves
• The honest drawback
• The pool is indoors and limited to ages twelve and over
• It sits above a luxury mall, and courtyard entry rooms have no view

A rooftop pool facing the Almudena, and 40 square metre rooms at half the Golden Triangle rate

The nineteenth century palace of the Dukes of Granada de Ega became a Gran Melia in 2016, and the conversion kept the courtyard garden and its fountain intact rather than roofing it for function space. Velazquez is the decorative theme and it starts at the reception desk, where a large reproduction of Las Meninas hangs behind the clerks. There are 180 rooms: 140 standard, 20 Red Level and 20 suites, many built for families.

The arithmetic is what puts it fourth. Entry rooms start around 40 square metres, which matches Rosewood Villa Magna at less than half the rate. The seventh floor terrace holds a swimming pool and a whirlpool and looks straight at the Almudena Cathedral and the Royal Palace, one of only two rooftop pools in these ten. Downstairs there are three restaurants and two cocktail bars, which is a lot for 180 rooms: Jardin de los Duques in the palace's former stables under chef Manuel Arenilla, Coroa Royal Gallery and Garden with its Portoro marble bar, and Montmartre 1889. The spa is run by Thai Room Wellness.

Ask for a palace side room. The rooms over Cuesta de Santo Domingo catch noise from a street busier than it looks on a map; the palace side is quieter for no extra money. If you are travelling as a family, Red Level is worth the upgrade in a way club floors usually are not: its own arrival area and check in, a private lounge, and a dedicated seating and dining area inside the room rather than a tray on the desk. The Royal Palace and the Teatro Real are five minutes on foot, Plaza Mayor ten, Puerta del Sol nine, and Opera and Santo Domingo metro three.

Two things temper it. The rooftop pool is small and opens seasonally, so the photograph that sells this hotel is unavailable for roughly half the year. If you are here between November and April, book it for the address and treat the roof as a terrace. And the Austrias streets around it are steep, narrow and thick with tour groups by mid morning, which is charming for a day and wearing by the third. The Prado is twenty minutes away, the furthest of any central hotel here. At 324 dollars with a 4.8 from 2,079 reviews, it is the value pick of the ten and it is not close.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• Rooms of about 40 square metres at a mid range luxury rate
• One of only two rooftop pools here, facing the Almudena Cathedral
• Five minutes from the Royal Palace and the Teatro Real
• The honest drawback
• The rooftop pool is seasonal and closed for about half the year
• Twenty minutes on foot from the Prado, and tour groups from mid morning

The largest standard rooms in Madrid at about 40 square metres, and the highest rate in this guide

The original Villa Magna opened on the Paseo de la Castellana in 1972 and was, for a long stretch, the hotel Madrid business was done in. Rosewood took it down to the frame and reopened it on 22 October 2021 with interiors by BAR Studio and 154 keys: 101 guest rooms, 49 suites and four signature suites. The gardens, with their century old cedar and carob trees, are maintained as a proper landscape rather than a planted courtyard.

Rooms are the argument. Entry categories run to about 40 square metres, which in Madrid is unusual, with chevron parquet, a walk in wardrobe and a marble bathroom with twin basins. Amos, from the Michelin starred Jesus Sanchez, is a destination restaurant that happens to sit in a hotel. Las Brasas de Castellana handles all day Spanish grilling, Tarde.O is styled on an English club with a serious vermouth list, and Flor y Nata is the patisserie. The Sense spa has four therapy cabins, a hammam, a thermal area with a jacuzzi and a large fitness centre. It has no swimming pool.

The practical note is which way you face. Castellana rooms get the light and the traffic noise in equal measure, and the quieter rear rooms are the better booking unless you want the boulevard view specifically. The Rosewood Associate system, which is butler service under another name, covers every room category rather than only the suites, so use it. Most guests never ask. Serrano and the shopping streets are two to five minutes away, Ruben Dario and Colon metro about five.

Now the part that keeps it out of the top three. This is the highest starting rate in the guide at 791 dollars, it has no pool, and it is twenty to twenty five minutes on foot from the Prado with Puerta del Sol closer to thirty. That combination is defensible if your Madrid is Serrano, the Bernabeu and a long dinner. It is hard to defend if your days are built around the Golden Triangle, because you will either walk fifty minutes a day or spend real money on taxis, and you will do it from a hotel with nowhere to swim when you get back. The rooms and Amos are genuinely first rate. The address is a shopping district, and the rate does not acknowledge that.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• The largest standard rooms of any hotel in this guide, at about 40 square metres
• Amos holds a Michelin star and is a destination in its own right
• Butler style service on every room category, not just the suites
• The honest drawback
• The highest starting rate here, at USD$791, with no swimming pool
• Twenty to twenty five minutes on foot from the Prado

One of only two rooftop pools in this guide, on top of the old Gran Hotel Velazquez

Bless opened in 2019 inside the building that was the Gran Hotel Velazquez, kept the facade and threw almost everything else out. The result is 111 rooms that lean theatrical: parquet, strong colour, bold wallpaper, vintage furniture and very good beds. It is run as a lifestyle hotel rather than a grand one, with a young team, a music programme and late hours, and that is a decision rather than an accident. At 4.7 from 950 reviews it is doing it well.

The roof is the reason to come. Picos Pardos Sky Lounge has a swimming pool in summer and, in winter, heated igloos and a glazed pergola, which is why it keeps trading when the pool closes. SLVJ does Japanese food with live music and a bowling alley hidden behind it. Pinzelada is the lobby lounge for all day eating, and Blessed Breakfast handles the morning. The spa is in the basement and is built around a wet circuit with a Bathology ritual and Beldon Beauty treatments, not lanes.

Entry rooms are compact by five star standards, roughly 25 to 30 square metres, and the design carries more of the weight than the square footage does. The terrace categories on the upper floors are the booking that makes sense here: each has an outdoor room of its own and several put a roll top bath in the bedroom, and the gap in rate is smaller than the gap in experience. Velazquez and Nunez de Balboa metro are both within five minutes and the Serrano shops are three.

The drawback is the roof, which is also the attraction. Picos Pardos sells tables to the public and books out, so on a warm Friday the lift is full of people who are not staying and the pool deck is not yours in any meaningful sense. Go up before noon or accept it. The second problem is seasonal and blunter: the pool opens in the warmer months only, so a winter guest is paying a Salamanca rate for a facility they cannot use, and the Prado is still twenty to twenty five minutes away with Puerta del Sol over thirty. Come here in June and it is one of the best value rooms in Madrid. Come in January and you are paying for a photograph.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• One of only two genuine rooftop pools in this guide
• The terrace room categories have private outdoor space and roll top baths
• SLVJ and Picos Pardos mean you do not have to leave for a good evening
• The honest drawback
• The rooftop is open to outside guests and books out on warm evenings
• The pool is seasonal, and entry rooms are 25 to 30 square metres

A walled garden of chestnut trees and only 49 rooms, in a Chamberi palace of the 1890s

This was built in the 1890s as the residence of the Duke of Santo Mauro, became a hotel in 1991, and relaunched as a Luxury Collection property after a redesign by Lorenzo Castillo. The 49 rooms sit across three buildings: the Duke's house, his daughter's mansion next door, and the converted stables. Around them is a walled garden of chestnut trees with gravel paths, box hedging and a stone fountain, in the middle of Chamberi, which is the entire argument for staying here and a good one.

La Biblioteca occupies the Duke's library, kept the original floor to ceiling oak shelving, and is one of the better looking dining rooms in the city. There is a wine bar doing Mediterranean bistro food with conventional and natural wine, and a restored chapel that works as a private dining room with its own cellar. The Royal Suite runs to about 130 square metres with two bedrooms and butler service. For wellness there is a fitness room and treatments in the room. No pool, no spa.

No two rooms here are alike and the choice is a real one. Palace rooms have the height, the cornices and tall windows onto the garden. Stable rooms are lower, quieter, and look onto lemon trees and the herb beds that supply the kitchen, and I would take one of those over a mid tier palace room every time. Some cheaper categories are genuinely small, so ask for the square metres rather than the category name. Ruben Dario metro is five minutes and the Bernabeu fifteen by taxi. The timing matters more: May to early July and late September are when the garden is worth the rate.

Which points straight at the problem. In July and August the garden, the reason you booked, is unusable between noon and six, with no pool and no spa to retreat into. At 587 dollars that is a lot of money for a room and a shaded corner. The other issue is distance: the Prado is twenty five to thirty minutes on foot and Sol about twenty eight, so every museum day starts with a decision. Its 4.4 from 573 reviews is the joint lowest here, and reads as a hotel some guests adore and others find underequipped. Both are true at once. Book it in late spring, for two or three nights, as a couple.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• A walled garden of century old chestnut trees in the middle of Chamberi
• Only 49 rooms, so the service is genuinely personal
• La Biblioteca sits in the Duke's restored library, oak shelving and all
• The honest drawback
• No swimming pool and no full spa at USD$587 a night
• Twenty five to thirty minutes on foot from the Prado

A Natura Bisse spa with a pool at USD$259, three minutes from four metro lines

URSO occupies a stone palace of 1915 built for the Papelera Espanola paper company, converted into a 78 room hotel in 2014 and run as a Small Luxury Hotels of the World member. The conversion kept the stained glass, the tilework and the marble, and dropped a glass and timber staircase into the old central patio, still the best thing in the building. Note the address before you book anything else: this is Alonso Martinez, on the boundary between Chamberi and Justicia, not Chamberi proper. That puts Chueca and Malasana within ten minutes on foot and makes it far better placed for dinner than the Chamberi label suggests.

The spa is why it is here. Natura Bisse runs it on the ground floor: a two person massage room, a hot and cold water circuit, water jets and a small pool for spa users. It is the only hotel under 300 dollars in this guide with any pool at all. Casa Felisa is the restaurant, Madrid cooking with a long wine and champagne list and a traditional cocido on Sundays, and it takes local bookings rather than a captive audience.

The rooms are quiet, classically dressed and mid sized, with good soundproofing and tall sash windows, and several have small private balconies. The courtyard facing rooms are extremely dark and extremely silent, which divides people sharply; if you sleep badly in a dark room, say so at booking and ask for a street side balcony on Mejia Lequerica. Roughly a tenth are family rooms with connecting doors, more than most hotels this size bother with. Alonso Martinez metro is three minutes away on four lines, which here matters more than walking distance.

The honest framing is that this is a boutique hotel in a residential quarter, not a landmark, and it should be judged that way. There is no view worth the name from any room. The pool is small and shared with day spa clients, so it is busy at weekends; book your treatment and your swim for a weekday morning and the place is effectively yours. The Prado is about twenty minutes on foot, Puerta del Sol nineteen and Gran Via twelve. At 259 dollars with a 4.6 from 856 reviews, it is the most spa you can buy in Madrid for the money, and the front desk will know your name by the second morning.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• A real spa with a pool at well under palace hotel money
• Alonso Martinez metro, on four lines, is three minutes away
• Small enough that the staff learn your name by the second day
• The honest drawback
• The pool is small and shared with day spa clients at weekends
• Courtyard rooms are very dark, and no room here has a view

A minute from the high speed platforms, and at USD$115 the cheapest room in this guide

Only YOU Atocha opened in March 2017 in a converted building at Paseo de la Infanta Isabel 13, directly opposite Atocha station, its balconies picked out in red against a chequered facade. One correction first, because almost every list gets it wrong: this is in the Retiro district. There is no administrative district called Atocha. That matters more than pedantry, because it means the Retiro park gate is five minutes from the front door and the Reina Sofia is eight.

There are 206 rooms over seven floors, 114 Deluxe, 78 Premium and 12 junior suites, arranged around a glass roofed atrium that runs the full height of the building. Sep7ima is the seventh floor restaurant and rooftop terrace, looking over the roof of Atocha station, and it now trades to the public as one of the better known roofs in this part of the city. Trotamundos does international food and cocktails on the ground floor, and Breakery is a bakery and brunch counter run with Madreamiga. There is a gym. There is no spa and no pool.

Skip the Deluxe rooms. They are small, plainly finished compared with the public spaces, and a number of them face the internal atrium rather than the street, which means no outside window at all. Premium adds the space and the window for a modest step up, and the twelve junior suites are the only category here with a proper sitting area. The other piece of advice is about trains: Atocha is the terminus for high speed services to Seville, Cordoba, Valencia and Barcelona, so if Madrid is one stop of several, this hotel saves you a cross city taxi on both the arrival and the departure.

The plain version is that this is a four star lifestyle hotel and does not pretend otherwise, and it sits in a luxury guide because of where it is and what it costs rather than what it is. The public rooms are treated as neighbourhood spaces and stay busy with Madrilenos, which is excellent for atmosphere and poor for a quiet coffee at half past nine. No pool, no spa, small entry rooms. Set against that: 115 dollars, a 4.8 from 3,338 reviews, the Prado fourteen minutes away on foot and the Reina Sofia eight. Spend what you save on dinner.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• A minute from Atocha and the high speed train platforms
• The Reina Sofia is eight minutes on foot and the Prado about fourteen
• Far and away the lowest starting rate in this guide
• The honest drawback
• A four star lifestyle hotel rather than a luxury one, with no pool or spa
• Deluxe rooms are small and some face the internal atrium with no window

The highest guest scores in this guide, and the longest walk to the Prado

Heritage opened in 2018 in a listed building of the early twentieth century in upper Salamanca, joined Relais and Chateaux, and has quietly collected the best guest scores of any hotel in this guide: 4.9 from 495 TripAdvisor reviews. Read those reviews and the pattern is unusual. Guests name individual members of staff rather than facilities, which for a 46 room hotel is the whole business model working as intended.

Lorenzo Castillo did the interiors and did not hold back: lacquered wood, polychrome marble, handmade wallpaper, a chequerboard floor in the lobby, European antiques and eighteenth and nineteenth century paintings through the public rooms. Haroma is the restaurant, overseen by Mario Sandoval of the two star Coque, and from late spring the terrace eight floors above Diego de Leon is laid for dinner under the ivy. Massage treatments are available on request. There is no spa, and there is no pool.

Book a junior suite or a corner room and do not talk yourself out of it. The entry categories are compact and, with that much wallpaper and that many antiques, can feel dark; the junior suites have tall windows onto Diego de Leon and proper sitting areas, and that is where the building opens up. Bathrooms throughout are marble and well equipped rather than large. Diego de Leon metro is two minutes away on three lines and Nunez de Balboa five, which is the practical answer to almost everything below.

Because the position is the problem, and it is the reason this sits tenth. The Prado is about thirty minutes on foot and Puerta del Sol closer to forty, which makes Heritage the outlier of these ten rather than simply the furthest out. Upper Salamanca is handsome and residential and there is nothing wrong with it, but you are committing to the metro twice a day. The roof reads as a pool deck in photographs, with loungers and planting, and it has no pool, which catches guests out often enough that the hotel should say so louder. On a 35C afternoon in August there is nothing here to fall back on. If you have already seen the Prado, and you want an antique filled town house run by people who remember you, it is the best small hotel on this list at 236 dollars.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• The best guest scores in this guide at 4.9 from 495 reviews
• Lorenzo Castillo interiors and real antiques, not hotel furniture
• Diego de Leon metro, on three lines, is two minutes away
• The honest drawback
• About thirty minutes on foot from the Prado and forty from Sol
• The roof is a terrace with loungers, not a pool, and there is no spa