This city is a living museum and this hotel immerses you in it
It takes a lot to distract from the magic of the Seville skyline. Standing on a rooftop here you couldn’t be anywhere else, so recognisable are the domes and spires of countless churches and convents, the Gothic flourishes of beautiful Seville Cathedral, the sky-scraping majesty of the Giralda tower.
The Moorish influence is still so distinctive in this city, even from high above, that you half expect to hear a call to prayer ringing through the cool dawn air. Instead, there’s just the flap of pigeon wings and the occasional shout or cackle of laughter from the street as the sun oozes over the horizon.
What could draw you away from a scene like this? What in the world could be more entrancing than the Pearl of Andalusia as it wakes from its slumber?
Sun-dappled suite.
Breakfast. Of course.
This rooftop, and this breakfast, are provided by Hotel Palacio de Villapanes, an 18th-century palace that has been skilfully and lovingly eased into the modern world. There is much below roof level to distract from the beauty of the surroundings, though for now, I’m focused on food.
Breakfast here is served in a courtyard within the hotel, a perfectly Andalucian hideaway from the oncoming heat of the day, lined with orange trees fat with fruit, large umbrellas providing shady succour.
At the tables below those shelters, guests are served meals fit for kings and queens, beginning with coffee and pastries, moving into platters of fruit, and then eggs Benedict layered over local jamon iberico ham, and then – actually, this addition is purely my own suggestion – an extra slice of toast slathered with tomato pulp and olive oil and draped with more jamon.
Outside the imposing double doors of the palace, Seville is beginning to wake. This is a city so obviously and warmly embraced by history, a living museum, a warren of tight alleyways and brightly painted facades in a settlement that has seen Phoenicians, Romans, Vikings, Moors and Castilians come and go.
Hotel Palacio de Villapanes Seville Spain terrace.
The Spanish Inquisition took place here. The Seige of Seville was fought. Beethoven and Mozart set operas here. Magnificent buildings like the Real Alcazar and Casa de Pilatos were erected. Castilian kings and queens ruled.
As a visitor in a place such as this you want to immerse yourself in that history, to try to touch Seville’s heart. And Palacio de Villapanes gives you no choice but full immersion. You live within history.
This mansion was built in 1729 by Admiral Manuel Lopez Pintado, a trader and sailor with close connections to the Bourbon monarchy. His home, in the Santa Catalina neighbourhood, was upgraded to the status of palace when Lopez Pintado himself was upgraded to the title of Marquis, and the building would come to be known as one of the most beautiful examples of Baroque civil architecture in Seville.
Guest lounge.
Stay in a suite here and come to know what it felt like to be a Marquis in 18th century Andalusia – only, a Marquis who had an Apple iMac on his desk, a Nespresso coffee machine on the benchtop, and a Philippe Starck tub in the bathroom.
When Villapanes was transformed into a boutique, 50-room hotel in 2009, many modern alterations were made; however, the suites, set in the original palace building, with incredibly high, wooden ceilings, sprawling layouts and sets of double doors opening out to the cobblestone street, retain much of the grandeur of a bygone aristocratic era.
Rooms with a view: the rooftop.
Stroll through the public areas of the hotel, too, and you can’t miss that sense of rich history, from the shaded porticos surrounding the central courtyard, to the bar area with its original, intricately patterned parquet floor, to the sweeping staircase in the shadow of Lopez Pintado’s family crest.
And then of course there’s the rooftop, perhaps not used during the Marquis’s time, though now home to a small pool and several sun-loungers and day-beds on wooden decking. Lift your eyes to the horizon and there is Seville in all its splendour, church domes and spires, TV antennas and terracotta tiles, the Giralda tower, the flawless sky. It’s not a distraction though – just part of a historic whole.
The writer stayed as a guest of Small Luxury Hotels of the World
THE DETAILS
Hotel Palacio de Villapanes is a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, and is at Calle Santiago 31, Casco Antiguo, Seville. Room-only from €275 ($450) a night. Phone +34 954 50 20 63. See slh.com
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