Mercer Sevilla

The patio of Casa Palacio Castelar kept its arches and lost its sky. When Cruz y Ortiz, the Seville architects whose work includes the Rijksmuseum, made the 1880 mansion a hotel in 2016, they kept the classical front and the marble staircase and roofed the courtyard in glass, so the light now comes down onto white marble and a fountain. All eleven rooms are arranged round it, and the Hall Bar sits in it, under the glass, in the middle of the house. The ceilings run to four and a half metres. Amanda Molina's interiors set moss green and mandarin orange against the old plasterwork. Up on the roof, behind white walls, the deck and the pool are for residents alone, and from May to October a bar looks across El Arenal, once the city's port, to the Maestranza and the cathedral.

Recommended for couples who want Seville on foot and an eleven-room house to come back to, and for a family of up to six, since the Suite connects to a Junior Suite and cots are free. The cathedral is five minutes away, and the concierges, members of Les Clefs d'Or, will book a flamenco masterclass or an afternoon painting tiles in Triana. Guests praise the beds, made up in Egyptian cotton of 400 threads. In the evening Fizz, modelled on the cocktail bars of New York's East Village, lets the rest of Seville in. Dinner is at María Luisa, Tuesday to Saturday, with Huelva prawns and Cantabrian anchovies. It seats eighteen and is named after the park the Infanta María Luisa gave the city in 1893. The park, at 34 hectares, has rather more room.