The 10 Best Hotels in Barcelona: Sleep Where Picasso Painted

The former bank on Passeig de Gràcia now deals in caviar and Catalan cooking. Patricia Urquiola redesigned it with the architects Carlos Ferrater and Juan Trias de Bes, and Mandarin Oriental Barcelona now holds Two Michelin Keys across 98 rooms and 28 suites. It also earns our top spot.

Carme Ruscalleda and Raül Balam cook Catalan food for a Michelin star at Moments. Blanc is looser, putting out pa amb tomàquet and rice dishes under a glass atrium from 7am. In season, ride up to Terrat, where Riofrío caviar, oysters and smoked A5 Wagyu nigiri arrive with the boulevard below.

Ask for a Deluxe Boulevard room (367 sq ft) and you wake up facing the Manzana de la Discordia. The spa has eight treatment rooms and a 12-metre indoor pool, and a dipping pool waits on the roof. Time your trip, though. Terrat and the Mimosa Garden bar both close for part of the year.

Book the table before the room. Lasarte was the first restaurant in Barcelona to win three Michelin stars, and it has held them since 2017, with Martín Berasategui directing and Paolo Casagrande running the kitchen. It serves Wednesday to Saturday only. BERA por Martín Berasategui fills the gap every day with shared dishes and cocktails.

The house around them is Casa Enric Batlló, a neo-Gothic mansion that Josep Vilaseca i Casanovas built in 1895 and 1896 for the industrialist Enric Batlló. Oscar Tusquets renovated it with Carles Bassó and Tote Moreno. As Monument Hotel, it is now a five-star Gran Lujo hotel of 84 rooms and suites on Passeig de Gràcia.

Climb to the sixth floor for the pool, 20.5 metres of it running along the roof beside the Verbena Terrace bar, with La Pedrera in view. The Penthouse Suite takes in the same view from five balconies. Travelling with children? The hotel lists its Family Room without a balcony.

Salvador Dalí's suite at El Palace still looks the way it did during his stays. The hotel opened on Gran Via in 1919 as the Ritz of Barcelona, and its other Art Suites borrow their names from César Ritz, Carlos Ruiz Zafón and Joan Miró. One Art Deco suite went further and became home to the Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood.

The Mayan Luxury Spa runs a pre-Hispanic temazcal sauna. The hotel says it is the first of its kind in Europe. On the roof, the garden keeps its pool for guests, with 360° views and the Sagrada Família in the distance. Dinner is Rafa Zafra's Amar Barcelona, for sea urchins and prawn tartare with caviar. Tea is in the Grand Hall, where a pianist plays.

Lorca, Miró, Picasso, Josephine Baker and Hemingway have all checked in at the Majestic Hotel & Spa. It opened on Passeig de Gràcia in 1918 as the Majestic Hotel Inglaterra. The walls keep good company too. The hotel owns a private collection of more than 1,000 works, and pieces by Tàpies, Chillida, Jaume Plensa and Anish Kapoor are on display.

Room sizes swing a long way. The Royal Penthouse is 470 m², comes with a butler and a chauffeur, and is the largest suite in Barcelona by the hotel's own count, while the Deluxe rooms are 20 to 25 m². Up at La Dolce Vitae, the rooftop plunge pool is open-air and unheated. Save your laps for the 12-metre heated pool in the spa, where guests get an hour free each day.

Fancy a bath under the Gothic Quarter sky? The Deluxe Terrace at Hotel Neri has its tub outdoors, and the Deluxe Balcony opens straight onto Sant Felip Neri Square. The hotel fills two historic buildings on that square, beside the old Jewish quarter, and one of them is a 12th-century palace. It is a five-star of 22 rooms and suites, and the only Relais & Châteaux hotel in Barcelona.

Dinner is no walk at all. Alain Guiard's restaurant, "a", is the only one on the square, and the tatin is the dish to order. Afterwards, climb to Roba Estesa, the planted terrace on the roof.

Picasso was fifteen when he set up his first studio on this roof and painted Science and Charity there. His window still stands, restored and facing the Mediterranean, and today it shares the rooftop of Serras Barcelona with a plunge pool looking over Port Vell and Barceloneta.

Francesc Daniel Molina, the architect of Plaça Reial, designed the building in 1846. It is now a five-star Gran Lujo hotel facing Port Vell. Alejandro Loaiza cooks rice, seafood and charcoal-grilled meats at Informal, and Le Nine, the mezzanine bar, is open 24 hours for anyone landing late. El Born is under five minutes on foot, and the beaches are ten.

Jordi Cruz cooks for three Michelin stars in what used to be the house's theatre, and his tasting menu (€315) still puts on a show with a "Bloody Mary on the rocks". That kitchen is the reason to come to ABaC Barcelona, a century-old house with a garden in Sant Gervasi, with a contemporary building beside it. It sits about 15 minutes from the centre.

Bed is a short stagger from dinner. There are only 15 rooms, each with a hydromassage tub and Bulgari toiletries. Book the Penthouse for its 90 m² terrace and outdoor jacuzzi. The spa has a heated pool with jacuzzi and a cold pool for the morning after.

Televisión Española once ran its Catalonia studios from a Montjuïc palace that Ramón Raventós designed for the 1929 International Exposition. Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier laid out the gardens. Òscar Tusquets later reworked the building into Hotel Miramar Barcelona, a five-star Gran Lujo hotel that now holds One Michelin Key. Ask about the view when you book, because not every room faces the sea.

Swim outdoors in summer, the only months the outdoor pool opens. The rest of the year, Spa Alterego has Natura Bissé treatments and an indoor heated thermal circuit, free with any treatment or €35 without.

Arrive in jeans and leave in a suit. L'Atelier at Cotton House will have Santa Eulalia's tailors make you one. It suits a building with a long cotton history. In 1879 the cotton magnate Miquel Boada commissioned it on Gran Via from the architect Elies Rogent. The cotton guild bought it in 1957, and Rubió i Tudurí added four floors and a hanging spiral staircase that is still in use. It opened as a hotel in 2015, with interiors by Lázaro Rosa-Violán.

Take afternoon tea in the library, the guild's old board room, among its original textile books. The 23 m² Panamá rooms face inward, so skip them and aim for a suite. The duplex Vichy Suite opens next to the rooftop salt pool.

Lie by the adults-only Gehry Pool and you are face to face with Gehry's Fish sculpture. Hotel Arts Barcelona is the beach pick on our list, a five-star tower at the Port Olímpic whose 432 rooms start at 45 m². At Enoteca Paco Pérez, two Michelin stars come with a list of more than 700 wines.

Mind the calendar. The hotel is renovating through June 2027, with partial closures, and the spa's sauna and steam bath are paused. The pools are summer-season only, too. Come in summer, check what is open, and book the Arts Suite: 210 m², with a sauna of its own.