Hotel Boutique Plácido y Grata

The way into Plácido y Grata is through the restored main gate, then the original grille behind it, and then the courtyard: ten marble columns carrying a gallery of arches round a fountain, with plants all about it. It is a great courtyard, and the house is right to show it to you first. The house went up in the regionalist style late in the nineteenth century and was rebuilt in 1914. In 2021 a Barcelona studio, Your Living Space, opened its three floors as a hotel of fifteen rooms, which is not many people to share a fountain with.

For us, what makes it special is the design, and the colours above all. The palette is drawn from the city's golden light: terracotta and stone, oak and beige linen. Under the old arches and beams the furniture is contemporary Scandinavian, with vintage Le Corbusier and Miguel Milá among it. Nordic furniture in an Andalusian manor house sounds like a mistake on paper. In the house it does not look like one.

The Deluxe Room we had earned its name, with plenty of space and a freestanding bath. The hotel gives the category thirty square metres, the original beams overhead and an open bathroom, which is a floor plan for people who already know each other well. The balcony looks onto Monsalves, a street that runs from the square in front of the Museo de Bellas Artes, so the museum is at the end of the road.

Breakfast came with the rate: Nomad coffee and Pablo Conesa's bread in the café on the ground floor. The baked goods were good enough to get up for. The cathedral is twelve minutes away on foot and the Triana bridge ten; for anything further, reception hires out bikes. At four the cocktail bar opens in the courtyard, and on a busy weekend evening, which is what we had, the service there was too slow. The weekdays are quieter, and they are when the hotel gives the most for the money.

The roof has sun loungers, a plunge pool and an outdoor shower, and on a sunny winter's day it is where the aperitif belongs. Up there, the golden light the colours downstairs were drawn from comes neat.