Hotel Villa Soro

The Londaiz family, who once owned Villa Soro, were merchants with one of the most important textile companies in Spain in its day, and a sitting room does right by them: black and white stripes on the curtains and on the cushions of a white sofa, and a carved black fireplace with a mirror almost to the ceiling. Outside it is grey stone below and white half-timbering above, in three steep gables. When a Gipuzkoan businessman bought it in 2000 and spent three years making it a hotel, the pitch-pine and marble floor of the entrance stayed, and so did the main staircase. Fifteen rooms are in the villa and ten in the old stables, which also hold the Sa Calma spa and the gym, and work by Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida hangs in the rooms. All of it looks inward, onto a walled garden laid out by Pierre Ducasse, gardener to the Royal Household and designer of the city's Miramar and Cristina Enea parks.

Recommended for couples who come to San Sebastián to eat and want somewhere quiet to come back to, and for families, who get a Family Superior Room and babysitting on request. A couple should ask for The Nest, on the top floor of the villa, with a queen bed and Gros out of the window. The hotel lends bicycles free, though Zurriola beach and its surfers are five minutes on foot, and the pintxo bars of the Parte Vieja twenty. For a night in, Eguzki Soro, got up as an English cocktail bar, serves dinner from seven to ten: Cantabrian anchovies and Ibérico ham, with Rioja Alavesa to drink. Its counter was rebuilt from the wood of the house's old chapel, the one part of the villa to have changed its religion.