If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR276.36), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Lord it over the Bay of Biscay like the loftiest of locals at Palacio Arriluce, a fabled mansion turned boutique stay in Getxo. Carefully restored interiors honour the hotel’s past as a high-society hang-out – and yet the glory days are still in full swing thanks to 21st-century innovations including a spa, fine dining and (forgive us, father) a bar spilling into the old chapel. A grand, champagne-fuelled tour of all the sea-facing terraces can easily absorb entire days, but when you’re ready, the concierge will help you slip behind the curtain of the Basque Country’s best insider spots.
Noon. Check-in is at 3pm, but both are flexible, subject to availability. There’s an extra fee to check in before noon or check out after 2pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £260.34 (€304), including tax at 10 per cent.
More details
Rates at Palacio Arriluce are room-only, but an à la carte lineup of pancakes, waffles and eggs any way you fancy is available for €38 a person.
Also
All of the hotel’s communal areas are wheelchair-accessible, and one Premier Room has been fitted with handrails, as well as aid lights for guests with hearing impairments.
At the hotel
Croquet lawn, garden, gym, and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: TV with Chromecast, minibar, Nespresso coffee machine, tea-making kit, free bottled water, hairdryer and hair straighteners, and Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle bath products.
Our favourite rooms
In summer, a Superior Room in the hotel’s Pergola building is a strong contender – you’ll have a spot out on the colonnaded terrace and your own suntrap garden. Stay in the Grand Suite, with original stained-glass windows and family portraits, and you’ll feel like one of the OG Arriluce clan. Otherwise, swing for a sea view – our pick is the Marina Suite, with a romantic stone balcony made for bay-gazing breakfasts.
Poolside
From June to September, life here revolves around the lower terrace. Chalk up some bay-gazing backstroke practice in the adults-only, unheated pool – regular charcuterie and spritz breaks at the poolside bar, recommended.
Spa
The Neguri neighbourhood has been a pioneer of the pampering scene since the 19th century, when the first spa proved a hit with Bilbão’s burgeoning bourgeoisie. Following in their pedicured footsteps, Palacio Arriluce’s spa has a menu of personalised massages, facials and couples’ treatments overseen by expert practitioners. There’s also a sauna, a swimming pool with hydro-jets and a Turkish bath to soak your way around, plus a gym should you feel the need to break a sweat in a more arduous manner. The sauna and pool section of the spa has space for up to four people at once, so be sure to book your session in advance.
Packing tips
That Moleskine sketchbook you’ve been too precious about to start. In your own personal gallery of William Morris patterns, Diego Canogar sculptures and original Sonia Delaunay pieces, inspiration is sure to strike.
Also
There’s a paid 24 hour-turnaround laundry service, so snappy dressing is smooth sailing.
Children
All ages are welcome. Connecting rooms are available for families, and babysitting can be arranged for €40-€50 an hour, but older children are more likely to jive with the all-frills jaunts and fine-dining menu.
On balmy summer days, a table out on the terrace is a no-brainer. Otherwise, snag the round table in Delaunay’s far corner for sea views and a smidge more seclusion.
Dress Code
Take your cue from your surroundings – carefully chosen vintage gems, paired with pieces from the coolest new Spanish designers.
Hotel restaurant
Ocean-blue panelling and an original Sonia Delaunay mantelpiece, designed for her old mate the Marquise de Arriluce back in the mansion’s Twenties heyday, set the tone in the art-deco dining room of the Delaunay. Heritage flavour with a bold, 21st-century twist is the order of the day here – and award-winning Basque chef Beñat Ormaetxea happily delivers. Gamey local specialities include roasted roe deer loin with chestnut purée and Iberian mushroom duxelles, but – perhaps unsurprisingly, with the bay in reach-out-and-touch distance – the catch of the day is the perennial star of the show.
Hotel bar
You’ll emerge a little more high-brow by osmosis at Bar Kupka, the hotel’s history-laden lounge bar. Original works by Orphic Cubist master František Kupka hang pride of place between hundred-year-old library shelves, still stacked with worthy tomes. But our eyes are firmly on the menu of haute cocktails and highlights from the hotel’s wine cellar. There’s a menu of dainty small plates and anything-but-dull sandwiches, too – the red curry chicken, sour cream, avocado and pickled onion sets a new benchmark for gourmet butties.
Oh come all ye fizz faithful – under the halo of the adjoining old chapel’s astonishing stained-glass windows, a shrine has been erected to all things champagne, serving vintages either straight from the cellar into cut-crystal coupes or transfigured into sinfully scrummy cocktails.
And from June to October, La Ría Poolside Bar is open for post-paddle pintxos and aperitifs down on the palm-dotted pool terrace.
Last orders
Breakfast is from 7.30am to 11am on weekdays, and from 8am at weekends. Lunch is from 1pm to 4pm daily, or until 5pm on Sundays. Dinner is 7.30pm to midnight, Monday to Saturday. Kupka pours until midnight; 1am, Fridays and Saturdays.
Room service
There’s a dedicated room service menu available from 7.30am to 11pm, plus a curated selection of nighttime nibbles from 11pm to 7.30am.
Presiding over the Bay of Biscay in historic ’hood and gastro hub Getxo, Palacio Arriluce is right by the beach and in easy reach of Bilbão.
Planes
Bilbão Airport is a handy 20-minute drive away. The hotel can hook you up with luxury transfers – roll up in a Mercedes E Class from €45 each way, or an S Class from €55.
Trains
Breeze in from Barcelona or Madrid to Bilbão Abando train station, a 20-minute cab ride from the hotel. Transfers from the station can be arranged from €45. For forays into the city, Bilbão’s Metro Line 1 is your friend. It links Neguri station, a five-minute stroll from the hotel, with the Casco Viejo and Gran Via in under half an hour.
Automobiles
The concierge can take care of trips to Bilbão’s cultural hotspots, La Rioja and other local highlights, but there’s free outdoor valet parking at the hotel if you want to get behind the wheel for a Basque Country road trip.
Worth getting out of bed for
The hotel’s concierge team can hook culture hounds up with a VIP visit to Bilbão’s ABAO opera, backstage access, interval bubbly and all. Or embark on an enlightening boat trip along the Nervión River, cruising the history-rich coast into Bilbão and culminating in a tour of the Guggenheim Museum. Roll through postcard-pretty valleys on a chauffeur-driven jaunt to Loizaga Tower, a centuries-old heritage hotspot set in eye-candy countryside – or at least that’s how petrol heads among you will sell it, as they slink off to ogle the resident Rolls Royce collection. And make inroads on your World Heritage site hitlist with a guided walk or bike ride to the Hanging Bridge, puttering along the seaside path and pausing for pintxo and Txakoli pit stops along the way. And now for the one the oenophiles have been waiting for – rock up to trailblazing Rioja winery Marqués de Murrieta, where you’ll have a guided tour and a private lunch and wine pairing.
If the Cantabrian Sea is calling to you, Ereaga Beach is a sandy, swim-friendly stretch just a five-minute stroll from the hotel. And venturing into Bilbão, the Casco Viejo is a colourful criss-cross of mediaeval streets, indie boutiques and Wes Anderson-worthy facades.
Local restaurants
At Tamarises Izarra, down by Ereaga Beach, Javier Izarra is joining the star-spangled ranks of Basque chefs serious about fresh, seasonal produce and traditional local flavours. Hake is a speciality here – pan-fried and paired with charcoal-roasted peppers, it makes for a hearty seaside feast.
For simple but special Japanese cuisine in walking distance, head to Iwasaki in Algorta, Getxo’s pretty old-port neighbourhood. Watch through the kitchen’s glass wall as chef Tatsuya Iwasaki’s crafts meticulously plated morsels, so finely tuned and packed with flavour they’ve scored a Michelin Guide mention.
Local cafés
For the best pintxos in the neighbourhood, head to Bar La Estacion De Neguri. Steps from the hotel, this local hangout has pretty, nautical interiors and a next level potato and olive oil omelette. Plus, it’s a cultural hub, with regular gigs and exhibitions from homegrown rising stars.
Go pre-Guggenheim to Cokooncafé for a selection of elevated brunch staples – Greek yoghurt with house-made granola and fresh blueberry compote, perhaps, or pillowy toast topped with avocado, tomato and pretty nasturtium petals. They’re serious about speciality espresso too, and operate on a “more coffee, more cookies” basis – now that’s a credo we can get behind.
Local bars
For craft cocktails and quality wine in Getxo,the hotel’s Bar Kupka is hard to top. But if you’re burning the midnight oil in Bilbão, Gin Fizz is a funky, city-centre spot with a menu of imaginative cocktails as long as your arm, each masterfully concocted by mixologist dream duo Diego and Esti. There’s a whole raft of rejigged classics and in-house inventions – your inner child will go wild for Charlie’s Kiss, a Wonka-worthy confection of chocolate-infused rum, vanilla liqueur, Seville orange marmalade and ginger ale – but for pure refreshment factor, the namesake fruit-infused fizzes are hard to beat.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this historic hotel near Bilbão and unpacked their opera glasses and oenological bounty, a full account of their Basque Country break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Palacio Arriluce in Getxo…
It’s not hard to picture the scene: a marquise and her artsy mates, tastemakers-in-chief of Bilbão’s high society, holding court in their turreted stronghold by the sea. Free-poured spirits and spirited conversation flow, and before long, song breaks out and someone’s brought out a sketchbook. Sure, it’s been a hundred odd years since Palacio Arriluce’s hedonistic Twenties heyday, but now the mansion’s iron-studded doors have been flung open and we’ve all snagged an invite to the party.
Airy, art-strewn salons, a layer cake of suntrap terraces and an Arts and Crafts staircase made for grand entrances have all been coaxed back to their former glory through thoughtful restoration. Patrician pastimes are still going strong here – haute cuisine, croquet, and cooing over original Sonia Delaunays are all time-honoured Arriluce staples. These days, though, the top button is firmly undone. French 75s flow in the stained-glass glow of the chapel, the spa is open for spoiling and sea salt-scented summer days pass in a flurry of pool splashes and pintxos alfresco. There’s a golden-sand beach in strolling distance and Bilbão is a Metro-hop away – but when mi palacio es tu palacio, staying put becomes a seriously seductive prospect.
