The Best Luxury Hotels in Girona, Spain

The three-Michelin-star El Celler de Can Roca is famous worldwide, and the brothers who own it also run Hotel Casa Cacao, a boutique hotel in the historic heart of Girona. It offers impressive views, gourmet breakfasts – and, yes, chocolate. The feel is of understated luxury, where rooms exude warm contemporary tones – soft beiges, greys and creams – offset by birchwood elements and mood lighting. Suites overlook the main plaza in the city, but it’s the skyline, seen from the roof, that’ll have you in awe, especially when accompanied by a gourmet brunch or chocolates.

With stone walls, 14th-century ceiling frescoes and windows framed by Romanesque arches, these four city-centre studio apartments radiate Medieval charm. However, contemporary comfort and fittings are in place, with high-thread-count linens, walk-in showers, tablets with Bluetooth connection to flat-screen TVs and patios with lamps and wicker sofas overlooking the crumbling Roman walls. The location is hard to beat, down an ancient alley, right next to the cathedral.

In the old heart of Girona, you’re so close to the cathedral you can almost smell the incense, and it’s where the Hotel Històric lives up to its name, inhabiting a renovated centuries-old mansion with Roman brickwork in its lower reaches. Rooms feel like luxurious, boutique upgrades of monks’ cells – with plain, unvarnished wood furniture and four-poster beds in some spaces. There’s also old stone and brickwork as well as shiny mosaic bathrooms with tubs for two and polished stone basins. Attic rooms have kitchenettes, and there’s a roof terrace with a fine cathedral view.

Overlooking two of the best PGA Championship golf courses in Spain, Hotel Camiral at the PGA Catalunya Resort has beautiful interiors by Lázaro Rosa-Violán. Rooms and public areas are bright with all-white angular walls against monochrome and colourful carpets and furnishings. The vast pool, surrounded by striped sun loungers and lawns, looks like a David Hockney painting. Meanwhile, in the lofty lobby lounge, a maze of sofas are pieced together like Legos on a polished wood floor speckled with bucket chairs – elegant living indeed.

A hotel with a garden in central Girona is hard to find, especially one right by the Onyar River, a short stroll from the old town, but you’ll get this and more at the Hotel Nord 1901 Superior. With a desk in each room, this hotel is popular with both business and leisure travellers. It also has an impressive patio in the back, where living walls of vines and climbing plants surround an irresistible blue-mosaic pool and a breakfast area shaded by giant parasols. Settle in for the whole morning.

As buildings are crammed together in Girona’s Medieval centre, finding a hotel in the neighbourhood with a decent pool can be tricky. However, you’ll find the spacious and bucolic Mas La Casassa close by; it’s only a five-minute drive from the cathedral. Rooms in this 16th-century farmhouse have original stone walls, antique beds and walk-in bathrooms, and three suites have indoor plunge pools. The main swimming pool is huge, surrounded by covered sun loungers.

As the name suggests, it’s all about fine views at this modern hilltop hotel – a 15-minute walk from El Call (Jewish quarter). Here, the expansive rooftop sundeck with a small pool offers panoramas of the city and distant mountains, while the lofty coffee lounge has views of the old town through its all-glass walls. With various function rooms, this is a big business-centric property, but the warm suites are as comfortable as they are intimate.

It’s only a 25-minute walk to the city centre from this hilltop boutique B&B, yet staying here feels like you’re in the depths of the countryside. Indeed, from the woodland garden, fields and copses stretch as far as the eye can see. And as you laze on a sun lounger next to the luxurious pool, the terracotta roofs and bell towers in Girona will be in view. The five rooms in the main villa are low-key luxe – with marble bathrooms and beds draped in Egyptian cotton. Breakfast is a hearty affair.