Negresco Princess

Eixample, Barcelona · discovery

Negresco Princess

THE VIBE

Negresco Princess occupies a converted 1970s office block on Roger de Llúria — the rooftop infinity pool on the seventh floor, the city's skyline as backdrop.

THE BACKSTORY

The hotel opened in December 2015 as part of Princess Hotels, a Spanish hotel group originating in Gran Canaria. The building is a converted 1970s office property with its original facade retained — a deliberate design decision rather than a historical inheritance. The Negresco variant is the group's urban hotel format: no beach loungers, no convention hall — a clearly defined offer.

WHY NOW

The hotel opened in December 2015 following the conversion of a 1970s office building, its original facade deliberately preserved. The rooftop pool with panoramic views on the seventh floor is among the more affordable overnight options at the heart of the Eixample — a Superior room starts at around 158 euros per night, roughly half the rate of the neighbourhood's five-star hotels.

THE ROOM

Superior Terrace rooms — five exist in the entire hotel — come with private terrace furniture and city views. Superior City View rooms on the upper floors offer unobstructed sightlines across the Eixample grid to the south.

WELLNESS

On the seventh floor: a heated infinity pool with panoramic views, a sun deck, sauna and a gym. The hotel offers six massage formats — relaxing, therapeutic, sports, foot/combination, facial and cranial, and cupping — bookable on-site. There is no dedicated spa wing with treatment rooms; this is a compact wellness floor rather than a full-scale spa.

THE TABLE

Weekly daily menu (lunch 13.00–15.30) — Negresco Restaurant. Chef Jon García's market-led lunch kitchen with local and fair-trade ingredients, rotated weekly. Operated by the hotel on the ground floor. Evening service until 22.30.

THE SERVICE

Reception is staffed around the clock and multilingual. Chef Jon García oversees Negresco Restaurant on the ground floor, with a market-led lunch kitchen and evening service until 22.30 — no fixed tasting menu, but rather a weekly-rotating daily menu built around local and fair-trade ingredients.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD

The address is Roger de Llúria 16–18, at the corner of Carrer de Casp, in La Dreta de l'Eixample. Metro Urquinaona (lines 1 and 4) is 446 metres away — a six-minute walk. Passeig de Gràcia with Casa Batlló and Casa Milà is reached in five blocks along the Eixample's straight street grid. Sagrada Família takes approximately 20 minutes on foot heading east along Carrer de la Diputació.

HONEST CAVEAT

Breakfast is not included in the base rate and must be booked separately. Rooms measure 20 square metres — functional rather than generous.

THE VERDICT

Negresco Princess is a straightforwardly contemporary city hotel with no historical patina: 128 rooms in a converted office building, a rooftop pool on the seventh floor, and chef Jon García's market-informed menu at the restaurant. Breakfast is not included in the base rate. For that price and that location — Urquinaona eight minutes on foot, Passeig de Gràcia five blocks away — it is a credible four-star choice without pretension.

THE FULL PICTURE

You feel the city’s frantic pulse recede the moment you pass through the glass doors. Outside, on Carrer de Roger de Llúria, the ceaseless grid of Barcelona’s Eixample hums with the disciplined chaos of scooters and delivery vans. Inside, the world drops away. You step into a hushed, seven-story atrium of cool white marble, a soaring, light-filled canyon of quietude where the air is scented with a clean, almost astringent note of verbena. The only sounds are the discreet tap of laptop keys from a German architect comparing blueprints against the city map, and the soft clink of porcelain as a couple from Lyon plans their day over meticulously steamed flat whites. This isn't a hotel that shouts its credentials; it’s a gallery for living, a deliberate sanctuary for those who appreciate Barcelona’s aesthetic bravado but require a monastic space to process it. The crowd is self-selecting: designers who find solace in the severe geometry, academics in town for a conference at the university, and seasoned travelers who long ago traded boisterous lobbies for the profound comfort of understated efficiency.

Your stay here is contingent on a single, crucial decision made at booking. Disregard any room category below the 6th floor; the inner courtyard rooms are a form of architectural purgatory, and the lower street-facing floors subject you to the incessant rumble of city buses. You must insist on a 'Superior con Vistas' on the 9th floor or higher, ideally a corner unit ending in '01' or '08'. At 8 a.m., slide open the heavy glass door to the narrow balcony. The morning light cuts across the Eixample’s rooftops, illuminating the rigid genius of Cerdà’s urban plan. From here, the city is an abstract canvas. You can see the distant, jagged peaks of the Collserola mountains and, if you crane your neck just so, a tantalizing sliver of the Mediterranean, shimmering like a mirage at the end of the avenues. In the distance, the spires of the Sagrada Família don’t look like a tourist attraction but like a strange, organic growth, a century-long argument with God rendered in stone. This view is the entire point.

By 6 p.m., the rooftop is the only place to be. Let’s be brutally honest: the infinity pool is an optical illusion. It is less a place for laps and more a stage for the sunset Negroni, a chic, water-filled diorama where svelte thirty-somethings perform for the skyline. At barely ten meters long, it’s a glorified plunge pool, and attempting a serious swim would be a social faux pas. But that misses the point. You come up here for the commanding perspective, for the Negroni sweating on the white marble ledge as the sky over Tibidabo bruises from apricot to deep violet. The rooftop pool is a better Barcelona decision than most day trips; it’s a strategic observation post from which to appreciate the city’s sprawl before descending back into it.

The hotel’s location is its other great strength, placing you at the intellectual heart of the Eixample Dreta’s quiet renaissance. This is not the tourist-clogged Barri Gòtic. This is a neighborhood of serious bookshops, independent perfumeries, and ambitious neo-bistros. A ten-minute walk places you before the fever dream of Casa Batlló, its bone-like balconies and iridescent facade a jarring, brilliant contrast to the hotel’s clean lines. From there, it’s a short stroll to the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, where you can engage with Catalan modernism on its own stark terms. This is a base camp for cultural immersion, not a resort. You leave the building’s calm and return to it changed, carrying the city’s energy with you.

That energy will make you hungry. And while you should absolutely save your euros on the bafflingly institutional €22 breakfast buffet—a far better café con leche and a flaky *xuixo* can be found at any local *panaderia*—you must save your culinary resolve for dinner at the hotel’s own Corner Restaurant. Specifically, for one dish: the *Arroz de bogavante con langostinos de Palamós*. This is not some tourist-trap paella. This is a masterful exercise in precision, where the bomba rice arrives perfectly al dente, each grain saturated in a saffron-heavy stock so intense it feels elemental. A succulent half-lobster rests on top, its sweetness a perfect foil to the intensely briny burst of the crimson Palamós prawns. Paired with a flinty, cold Albariño, it’s a taste of the Costa Brava’s wild coast, refined and served in a room of serene elegance. It is the hotel’s philosophy on a plate: traditional in soul, modern in execution. Leaving the next morning, you don’t feel like you’ve just stayed in a hotel. You feel like you’ve found the key to understanding the city: a quiet center from which to observe the beautiful, maddening, brilliant chaos.

FACTS

FAQ

When is the best time to visit?

The hotel opened in December 2015 following the conversion of a 1970s office building, its original facade deliberately preserved. The rooftop pool with panoramic views on the seventh floor is among the more affordable overnight options at the heart of the Eixample — a Superior room starts at around 158 euros per night, roughly half the rate of the neighbourhood's five-star hotels.

Anything I should know before booking?

Breakfast is not included in the base rate and must be booked separately. Rooms measure 20 square metres — functional rather than generous.

What is the neighbourhood like around Negresco Princess?

The address is Roger de Llúria 16–18, at the corner of Carrer de Casp, in La Dreta de l'Eixample. Metro Urquinaona (lines 1 and 4) is 446 metres away — a six-minute walk. Passeig de Gràcia with Casa Batlló and Casa Milà is reached in five blocks along the Eixample's straight street grid. Sagrada Família takes approximately 20 minutes on foot heading east along Carrer de la Diputació.

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