Mr & Mrs Smith

Mr & Mrs Smith have just returned from a review trip to this luxury city hotel in Madrid, and just as soon as they’ve finished their cava and calamares, a full account of their stay in Spain will be with you. In the meantime, just to whet your wanderlust, here’s a quick postcard from ME Madrid…

There’s cool, there’s really cool, and then there’s ME Madrid. Situated in the bullseye centre of the Spanish capital, this sharp-suited glamourpuss of a hotel has been a landmark since it was built in 1919, and towers palatially over the buzzing Plaza de Santa Ana. Once known for accommodating the stars of the bullring (the matadors, not the bulls), it’s now a hip haven for the Madrileño in-crowd. Thanks to a thorough refit by architect/designer Keith Hobbs (whom you may remember from such hotel interiors as The Metropolitan London), ME Madrid is now a smart, moodily lit space of bright whites, dark woods and creamy marbles, with floor-to-ceiling bay windows looking out over the city’s squares.

The rooms are ideal urban hideaways – sleekly styled and pamperingly comfortable, with stylish flourishes such as the retro purple mini-fridges, controllable lighting schemes (featuring curious indigo low lights that ME has not-quite-credibly dubbed ‘sexy lighting’), and spacious rain showers encased in black marble. 

Bedrooms, however, aren’t the focus here. That honour goes to the sultry ME Restaurant, where an El Bulli-trained chef plates up modern Mediterranean marvels and master mixologists concoct inventive elixirs such as black mojitos and lavender martinis. In summer, it’s the Roof Bar & Terrace that’s the star attraction. Here, reclined on a sofa by a table of tapas, you can admire a 360º sweep of a cityscape from the rooftop and gaze down at the throng beetling about the squares below. Now that’s cool.