Cotton House Hotel

A five-star Autograph Collection hotel in the 19th-century former headquarters of Barcelona's cotton guild on Gran Via, with interiors by Lázaro Rosa-Violán and a rooftop salt pool.

A hanging spiral staircase still climbs through Cotton House, as it has since the cotton guild owned the building. The story starts earlier, on Gran Via in the Eixample. In 1879 the cotton magnate Miquel Boada commissioned the first two floors of this neoclassical building from the architect Elies Rogent, as a family house.

In 1957 the cotton employers bought it as the Casa del Algodón, the cotton guild’s headquarters. The architect Rubió i Tudurí kept the facade, added four floors and built that staircase. Lázaro Rosa-Violán later led the restoration, and the hotel opened in 2015 as part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection. The carriage doors, marble staircase, parquet, boiseries and frescoes all survive.

There are 83 rooms and suites. The Panamá rooms are 23 m² and face inward, the Madras rooms face the city, and the Cotton rooms have a balcony over the courtyard. The Damasco and Otomán suites keep 19th-century frescoed ceilings and marble baths. The duplex Vichy Suite spreads 90 m² across the fifth and sixth floors, with a 25 m² private terrace, an outdoor shower and the rooftop salt pool next door.

Batuar, the restaurant and bar, serves market cooking from 7am to midnight and has a 300 m² courtyard terrace. The guild’s old board room is now the library, where afternoon tea is served among the original textile books. L’Atelier offers bespoke tailoring with Santa Eulalia, and there is a gym with treatment rooms. La Pedrera and Casa Batlló are nearby, and the Sagrada Família is a short walk the other way.