Hard Rock Hotel

Directly opposite the Reina Sofía Museum – home to Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece ‘Guernica’ – the Hard Rock group has magicked up a beautiful, laidback hotel (and on the site of a former car park, no less). Like in the HR restaurants you may have dined in elsewhere, there are plenty of cabinets filled with memorabilia here – chief among them the blue denim jeans worn by Elvis Presley during an NBC Television Special in 1968 – but it’s the rest of the decor that really stands out. The huge hanging guitar in the lobby, the mural inspired by the post-Franco La Movida countercultural movement behind the bar, the sculpture that riffs on Velásquez’s ‘Las Meninas’: the overall feel is that of an art gallery, perhaps one curated by Pedro Almodóvar. The rooms are slick, too, and pretty well priced (you’re talking between Є145 and Є200 for a double). And as for the food? Excepcional. Don’t miss the brunch that comes served in a guitar case, and the cocktails with views at rooftop bar RT60.