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 (EUR229.09), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Palacio de Villapanés was the lucky recipient of a masterful renovation, easing this stunning stone palace out of the 18th century and into the 21st. All the grandeur remains, but the marble columns, iron gates, vast wooden doors and vaulted ceilings have had a dose of technology added: Loewe TVs, WiFi and even Macs in Suites.
Smith Extra
Get this when you book through us:
A bottle of cava in your room and a hand-made chocolate treat from the kitchen
Noon, but flexible for €60 depending on the time. Earliest check-in, 2pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £216.95 (€252), including tax at 10 per cent.
More details
Rates exclude breakfast. A buffet with breads, cakes, pastries, meats and cheeses, fruit, jam, juice and cereal is €25 a person. Some à la carte items – eggs, bacon, sausages, smoked salmon – are included, and coffee is extra.
Also
The spa has a sauna and Turkish bath, and massages can be arranged on request.
At the hotel
Spa, gym and free WiFi. In rooms: flatscreen TV, minibar and free bottled water. All suites have Macs.
Our favourite rooms
It’s all about the Suites: majestic, elegant, grand, you name it. They have soaring ceilings and windows, original architectural details from the 18th-century construction (carved doors, hand-painted panels) and subtly thrown-in modern luxuries (Macs and flatscreens). There are five to pick from; we especially like the Suite Maestro for its marble fireplace and column-separated lounge, the Palacio Suite for its 16ft-high ceilings and warm tones, and the unusual Torreón Suite because it’s in the dome of the palace, with a vaulted wooden ceiling, private roof terrace and windows all around.
Poolside
There's a plunge pool and sunloungers on the roof terrace.
Spa
The wellness centre has a ceiling lit like a twinkling sky under which you can relax on comfy day-beds. Ask for a nimble-fingered masseuse to work out your knots, or hop into the wet and dry saunas. There's also a well-equipped gym.
Packing tips
A map of Seville to turn to when tangled in the twisty city streets; an appreciation of 300-year-old Spanish architecture.
Children
Cots are provided free; extra beds can be added to Executive Suites and Suites for €50 a night. Babysitting (upon request) costs €25 an hour. Breakfast is free for infants, €15 each day for children age 3 to 11 and €25 for those age 12 and over.
Go romantic and pick a banquette table with soft lighting.
Dress Code
Orchid-matching pinks and purples.
Hotel restaurant
The restaurant is in the building’s basement but it’s by no means dingy – it’s bright white instead (furniture too), with arched, airy ceilings. The banquettes have nifty up-lighting behind them, and there are a few black tables and cushions thrown in for good measure. The food is Andalucian, with some speciality modern tapas. You can’t go wrong with a slice or two or Iberian ham.
Hotel bar
Drinks can be served in the bar, lobby and out on the patios. Wash the tapas down with a couple of signature cocktails.
Last orders
Breakfast runs from 7.30am–11am, but it can be extended for late risers. Lunch service is between 1.30pm–3.30pm; dinner is 7.30pm–10.30pm. The bar stays open until midnight.
Room service
A select menu of hot and cold dishes is available 24 hours a day.
Seville’s San Pablo airport is 10km from the hotel. A taxi will cost around €30.
Trains
There’s a station 2km away, served by high-speed trains to Córdoba, Madrid and Malaga courtesy of Renfe (www.renfe.com).
Automobiles
The drive into the centre of Seville should only take around five minutes. The next big town along is Córdoba, an hour and a half away by car. Useful roads include the A-92 and A-4. Parking at the hotel costs €30 a day. They also have a recharging station for electric cars.
Worth getting out of bed for
Explore the Real Alcázar, a series of Moorish, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque palaces with exquisite gardens and the particularly picturesque Patio de Banderas. The former Jewish quarter, Santa Cruz, is worth a wander to admire its maze of narrow streets, wrought-iron gates and flower-filled patios. Crane your neck up to admire the lavishly decorated ceilings at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla in the Plaza del Museo, or head to Plaza de la Encarnación to see modern monument the Metropol Parasol.
Local restaurants
In typical Spanish style, Sevillans dine at a fashionably late hour, so aim to arrive at a restaurant or tapas bar at around 8.30pm. In Santa Cruz, head to the garden-side terrace at Modesto for the hefty selection of fresh seafood, including the signature gambas al ajillo. Close by is La Albahaca, where the French-flavoured menu covers a whole range of game dishes. Popular Mechela excels in fish: gambas, polpo, boquerones…rice dishes too. And El Pinton plates up modern takes on tapas: tempura egg with truffle parmentier, tuna tartare with wasabi rocks and French toast with orange-blossom gel and nougat mousse hint at its inventiveness.
Local bars
Cervecería la Giralda on Calle Mateos Gago is built into the ruins of a 10th-century Arab bath house. It’s famous for its tapas, particularly fish-based nibbles. The historic El Rinconcillo (+34 954 223 183) on Calle Gerona dates from 1670, and is the place to go for micro portions of salt cod.
Even if you arrive by inconspicuous taxi, rather than gilded, horse-drawn carriage, this city sanctuary is a place for kings and queens of any realm. Entering the huge, wrought-iron gates of Seville’s sultry Palacio de Villapanés, we’re flanked by towering marble columns, and it’s akin to stepping onto a film set. Stumbling across Kristen Scott Thomas smoking a cigarette in one of the oversized cane chairs would feel right. (I’m mixing countries, I know, but I’m conjuring to the Moorish elegance of ‘The English Patient’).
While the atrium and traditional riad-style courtyard, with its baroque fountain and orange trees, might hark back to the palace’s heritage, the lavishly refurbished rooms epitomise 21st-century luxury. Stylishly sombre-hued, the decor mingles panelled walls, rich brocades and sleek modern fittings. Sure there are flatscreen TVs and Macs in the suites, but c’mon folks, enjoy a holiday. Enjoy some old-fashioned lo-tech time: this sun-kissed beige-stone abode has been around since the early 18th century when the first Marquis of Torreblanca del Aljarafe set about building this palacio.
Sun-drenched Seville is cold in winter, but we’re blessed with glorious weather. Waking up to spotless blue skies, vitamin-D-inducing rays and orange trees is like mainlining Prozac. On our first morning, after a whirl with the Bulgari products in our pretty mosaic-tiled bathroom, we breakfast in the hotel in what must have been the palace cellars. All-white with fresh orchids it’s super elegant and celebrated for its Andalucian cuisine, but really all we want to do is get into the sunshine and make like the Spaniards with a café con leche and pastry in one of the little bars (the only thing that Seville has more of is oranges). If it were the searing summer months, chances are we'd only make it as far as the small plunge pool on the rooftop.
Seville, or Seveeya, as you should utter it sexily, is a concentration of all the best Spanish clichés (no boozy British stags here). It’s a place of blood, passion, and partying (with a week of piety in April); after all, it’s the city of Hemingway, Don Juan and Carmen. There are attractions enough to fill every second of a long weekend: the fairytale Gothic Cathedral and its famous tower the Giralda (sadly closed this time of year, but good reasons to return); the Museo de Bellas Artes, stuffed with treasures to rival the Prado in Madrid, including Velasquez and El Greco masterpieces; and of course the Alcazar palace. Built on the site of a Moorish fort, it is spectacular, but the real joy is the gardens: with alluring names like the Courtyard of the Maidens or the Patio of the Dolls it is an exotic paradise of reflecting pools, fountains and palm trees – a balm for citified spirits.
We find ourselves wandering the winding streets, eating, drinking and hanging out, and then eating and drinking some more. Which is basically what the Sevillanos seem to do. Palacio de Villapanés is walking distance from the city’s historic heart and we soon find ourselves in Plaza del Salvadore. It is so full of people of all ages, dressed in their finery, eating chips and drinking beer, soaking up the sun perched on the steps of the church, that we are sure we must have stumbled on a festival. Nope. It is just a regular Saturday morning in Seville.
You need to adjust your watches (and stomachs): lunch no earlier than 2.30pm; never have supper before 10pm; and siesta, naturally, in between. Before you know it, it is time to tapear – the verb to go from bar to bar (that is how seriously they take their tapas here) and Seville brags some of the best purveyors of this small-plate cuisine in Spain. El Rinconcillo is our starting point: one of the oldest and most famous tapas houses, the ceiling here is as crowded with giant hams as the tiled walls are with bottles and the floor is with bon viveurs. For supper, Bar Eslava in the barrio San Lorenzo district has been highly recommended by a charming girl at the hotel: unprepossessing from the outside, as narrow and crowded as a train carriage in rush hour, it is super popular for its delicious food – and it’s cheap as patatas bravas.
On Sunday, after stocking up on festive goodies in the food hall of department store Cortes Ingles (another tip-off from the lovely hotel staff), we explore the banks of the Guadalquivir River. The seafood restaurants along Calle Betis are so busy we wait ages at the bar; but that’s no hardship as we pick at fried fish, watching the locals eating inside at big, noisy family tables.
Just in case it seems that all we do is eat and drink, on the way back we visit the Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza, one of the finest bullrings in the world. You can take a tour of the small museum, the chapel where the matadors prayed before entering the ring and the infirmary they went to if their prayers weren’t entirely answered.
Flamenco is a Seville classic, but if that doesn’t get your heels clicking, try a steamy visit to Aire de Sevilla. Beautifully restored traditional Arabic baths hidden in our hotel's 'hood, Santa Cruz, and the most heavenly place to spend a weekend evening in December. Off-season mini-breakers, pack your swimsuits – you’d be amazed how difficult it is to find a bikini in winter in Seville. I could only find a horror. Thankfully the hammams are very dark inside, with tealights guiding us through the deliquescent floors – saltwater baths, steam chambers, a pool-sized thermal pool of different temperatures, all decorated like a scene from One Thousand and One Nights. Just when you think you couldn’t get more relaxed and still be conscious, you are silently ushered away for a massage. Mr Smith decides henceforth all other pampering sessions will seem as sensuous as a trip to the supermarket – except for maybe the seductive spa in our luxury hotel itself, which I remind him I will not be eaving unroadtested.
Herbal infusions are the conventional way to end a pampering session and Aires de Sevilla does have splendid tearooms, but it’s late, so there's nothing for it but to fall into one of Santa Cruz’s cosy bars. Here, our only company is the ubiquitous bovine head (Seville isn’t known as the Bull City in Spain for nothing) and a photo of cigar-clutching Papa Hemingway. A sherry or two later and we’re wandering those tree-lined cobblestone squares festively festooned in fairylights back to our private enclave of Palacio de Villapanés; it feels as though we’re the only tourists in an impossibly romantic city.
