Rosewood Villa Magna review: Spanish splendour in Madrid
This luxurious hotel is a cocoon of bliss that you’ll find hard to leave
For years, visitors to southern Europe have been drawn to Athens, Lisbon or Rome, but Madrid, Spain’s magnificent capital, often gets overlooked. That deserves to change – and Rosewood Villa Magna is the perfect place to stay if you’re looking to explore the city and relax in pure luxury.
Nestled in the Salamanca district, roughly Madrid’s equivalent to Knightsbridge, Villa Magna is set back deeply from one of the city’s most famed avenues, Paseo de la Castellana. It’s a prime location, but there’s a sense of discretion and privacy here that makes this hotel popular with presidents, footballers and other A-listers.
It’s also conveniently close to the amenities favoured by the elite. Serrano, one of the city’s most prestigious shopping streets, is immediately behind the hotel and where you’ll find the aristocrats of the fashion world. For those with more modest tastes, high street brands can be found here too, as well as the kind of art galleries, restaurants and nightspots that escape the mainstream tourist eyeline but reward anyone who seeks them out.
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Why stay here
Villa Magna may have only recently become part of the Rosewood family of hotels, but luxury has existed on this site for generations. The spot was initially home to the Anglada Palace, a 19th-century building designed by the architect Emilio Rodríguez Ayuso, but it was demolished in the 1960s and turned into the original Villa Magna hotel, which opened its doors in 1972.
Like all the properties in Rosewood’s portfolio, the renovated Villa Magna is quietly impressive. There’s something enigmatic about the charcoal and brass cubic facade (reimagined in 2021 by Ramon de Arana, the Spanish architect), but it’s undeniably imposing too. The same goes for the approach to the hotel from street level: two huge cedar and carob trees stand over reflective pools that complete a minimalist sense of grandeur.
Inside is where Rosewood’s imprint really sinks in. Australian interior design studio BAR has created an elegant, urbane space that’s sympathetic to the building’s rich history, unique local culture and, perhaps most importantly, the hotel’s role as a nest in which anyone can feel instantly at home.
I stayed at the end of October, just as rare heavy rain clouds closed in on Madrid. Bad news for my hopes of sunny walks around the nearby Parque del Buen Retiro (a Unesco World Heritage site), good news for making the most of the hotel’s abundance of sumptuous spots to hunker down in. And that’s how the hotel is best enjoyed. Like being inside a Rolls-Royce (or so I’m told), life inside the hotel is life in a cocoon of bliss that you’ll find hard to leave.
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The hotel’s staff are almost telepathically intuitive to your every need while still respecting your sense of space. Luxury surrounds you at all times, but I had a distinct impression that everyone is treated the same at Villa Magna; whether you’re a travelling star or someone on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, you’re made to feel equally at home.
Rooms and suites
No two rooms out of ViIla Magna’s 152 bedrooms are identical, which speaks for Rosewood’s untemplated vision for all its hotels. My suite came with a black and white chevron carpet and sunset orange wall, which set a modern, palatial tone with Mediterranean warmth.
While the scale of everything was impressive, the little touches certainly didn’t go unnoticed either. I was grateful for the slippers laid on a mat next to my bed and I was amazed to find my initials embroidered on my pillowcase – a pretty remarkable customisation.
Villa Magna also contains two breathtaking apartments on its top floor: Anglada and Salamanca. Both are individually designed and contain multiple bedrooms, a kitchen, office and vast amounts of outside space overlooking the city and across to the Guadarrama mountains. Even on an overcast day, an extraordinary amount of natural light flooded in. If you’re lucky enough to stay in one of these apartments, disappointment is an impossibility.
Eating and drinking
Villa Magna has four spots to wine and dine in, each different in concept but all proudly Spanish in flavour.
Flor y Nata – an artisanal patisserie and café near the lobby – is where you can find Madrid’s high society mingling over a café con leche (espresso with scorched milk) or a glass of Rioja. It also serves a neat menu of small dishes all day: the prawn croquettas was the first thing I tasted at Villa Magna and it set a very high bar.
Las Brasas de Castellana is the more informal of the hotel’s two restaurants, and also where its exquisite breakfast menu is served. The menu is extensive but it’s worth visiting just for the restaurant’s elevated version of the ubiquitous continental breakfast.
Like the hotel more generally, dining in Las Brasas is an experience of exceptional comfort and quality. Sofas line the perimeter of the two spacious rooms facing onto the front terrace, with each table respectfully distant from the next. An open kitchen smoothly dispatches a brasserie-style menu in the evenings, from which I ordered grilled bluefin tuna with Jerusalem artichoke cream and red wine jus, followed by the homemade “tart of the day”, which happened to be apple. Both were utterly delicious.
The hotel’s signature restaurant, Amós, is where you can try the celebrated cuisine of Michelin-starred chef Jesus Sanchez, who hails from northern Spain. Despite its “fine dining” tag, the atmosphere felt just as relaxed as anywhere in the hotel, even if the décor was a touch more elaborate. Marble, oak and antique furnishings root you in upscale Madrid, while photographs taken by the chef impart the unique oceanic accents of Sanchez’s homeland commune, Cantabria.
The flavours of that region are best sampled with the ten-course tasting menu, so don’t visit when you’re short on time. The dishes frequently change, but seafood is a mainstay, particularly the intense marinated anchovies – an unmissable Cantabrian speciality. But the star of the show when I visited was undoubtedly the hake with its pil pil, algae and codium air. I was told to expect an evocative collaboration of the Catabrian Sea and Madrid at Amós, and this dish majestically fulfilled that promise.
Madrid is an after-hours city with world-class nightlife, but you don’t need to leave Villa Magna if you crave some of that energy. Tarde.O is the hotel’s newest bar, which from Thursday to Saturday is open until 2am with tapas, cocktails, well-curated music and a covered, elaborately furnished terrace. The bar’s bespoke negroni selection is particularly dreamy, especially the Salamanca (gin, Rinomato, vermouth and Madroño liqueur).
SSense Spa
It would be a crime to stay at Villa Magna and not book an appointment at the in-house wellness spa, SSense. It’s open all day, but intentionally limits use to a very small number of guests at a time. Only once did I find myself sharing the infinity jacuzzi, hammam, steam room and sauna with another person, which made it a deeply tranquil experience both times I visited.
My 60-minute massage took that tranquillity to a whole new level. I am no stranger to a massage, but rarely have I had one quite as personalised and in surroundings that felt so attuned to mind and body. To say I felt rejuvenated after my treatment would be a grave understatement.
The verdict
All luxury hotels have to work extremely hard just to call themselves that, such are the unimaginably high standards expected from them by guests and inspectors alike. So in a city like Madrid, where there’s no shortage of five-star stays, the subtle points of difference become all the more important.
Villa Magna stands out not just for the luxury of its facilities and elite service, but also because of the warmth with which it presents itself to its guests. So comfortable and relaxed is the mood everywhere within Villa Magna that it’s easy to forget you’re in a hotel at all – and that’s perhaps the biggest compliment I can pay.
Rosewood Villa Magna, Paseo de la Castellana 22, 28046 Madrid, Spain; rosewoodhotels.com