Hotel Alfonso XIII, a Luxury Collection Hotel

The hotel was built for Seville's Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 and named after the reigning king, who proved the less durable of the two. Alfonso XIII left Spain in 1931 and died in exile in Rome; the hotel spent the Second Republic as the Hotel Andalucía Palace and took his name back after the Civil War. José Espiau y Muñoz won the competition to design it and built it in brick and plaster, with Mudéjar arches and a tower at the corner. Its heart is the courtyard, redesigned at the king's own request: a glazed colonnade round a fountain, the arches lined with hand-painted Triana and Mensaque tiles. In Lawrence of Arabia it played the officers' club in Cairo. The officers have gone. Restaurante San Fernando has their arches now, and breakfast is served under them.

Recommended for anyone who wants Seville's grand hotel, and for families who need a babysitter more than a kids' club, since the hotel has the one and not the other. The Real Alcázar is 150 metres from the door and the Cathedral 570, so the sights are a walk, and the saltwater pool in the garden is the thing to walk back to; in season its restaurant serves hotel guests only. The view decides the room. The Reales Alcázares Suite looks over the palace's gardens and fountains, and some Deluxe rooms face the Royal Tobacco Factory next door, where Bizet's Carmen rolled cigars and the university now keeps its rectorate. In the evening there is tapas at Ena, named after Alfonso's queen, or a cocktail in Bar Americano, turquoise and Art Deco, which dresses for the decade the hotel was built in rather than the centuries it was built to look like.