Akelarre

Akelarre was a restaurant for 47 years before anyone could stay the night. It opened on Monte Igeldo in 1970, and under Pedro Subijana, who arrived with Ada Pinter in 1975, the third Michelin star came in 2007, a quarter of a century after the second. In 2017 the architects Mecanismo set five stone volumes into the northern slope around it, clad them in dark slate laid in long courses and glazed them from floor to ceiling, so that in all 22 rooms the biggest thing is the Bay of Biscay. Each has a terrace of its own. On the roofs, among the grasses, round timber decks are sunk into the slate with sofas and white umbrellas, looking west along a wooded coast towards Getaria.

Recommended for grown-ups who have come to San Sebastián to eat, and would rather walk to bed after dinner than drive ten minutes back down the hill. The three-star dining room is dark slatted timber under a ring of lamps, with the sea in the windows. Espazio Oteiza, the informal kitchen, is named after the sculptor Jorge Oteiza, who was a regular, and pours cocktails from four until nightfall across 1,400 square metres of terrace. The hotel arranges walks up Adarra, and sunset sails on two old yachts, one of them built in Tunisia in 1961 for the French adventurer Henry de Monfreid. Every room faces the same sea, so a Superior Horizon gives up little to the AKELARRE Ocean Suite beyond a bath turned to the window and a heated plunge pool of 5.5 square metres, which is warmer than the Bay of Biscay and a good deal easier to reach.