Hotel Pulitzer Barcelona

Straddling the border between the old city and the Eixample, Hotel Pulitzer Barcelona is as modern as they come, fitting effortlessly into Barcelona’s already expansive cohort of high-design hipster hotels. It’s a 2004 renovation of a Twenties building, and its carefully preserved facade offers little hint of the striking Art Deco-influenced spaces within — again, in true Barcelona style.

Where it departs slightly from the standard set by its peers is in its embrace of conspicuous luxury. The Pulitzer is unashamedly upscale, the public spaces festooned with velvet sofas, lacquered bookshelves lined with books, and a collection of contemporary and antique artworks; bold and clean it is, but minimal it certainly isn’t.

Upstairs the rooms carry on in the same key; more rich dark wood, more top-quality furnishings, and upmarket musts like plasma televisions and free wireless internet. Bathrooms, the true measure of any hotel’s luxury quotient, are suitably decadent, tiled in aqua blue, stocked with Malin + Goetz bath products and custom robes and slippers.

The Greenhouse restaurant and bar are fine ones, strong contenders in a town that’s already quite full of excellent restaurants and bars; the spaces are stylish and verdant, and the roof terrace is a genuine treat, ideal for a sunset cocktail. But you don’t come to Barcelona to shut yourself up in your hotel — the Pulitzer’s location, just off Plaza Catalunya and Las Ramblas, is at the heart of the city, placing all the best of Barcelona at your feet.