Five-star Eixample, Barcelona
El Palace Barcelona
Barcelona's Ritz of 1919 on the Gran Via, where Dalí made his home in the city and Freddie Mercury first met Montserrat Caballé, with a garden on the roof facing the Sagrada Família.
Opens the hotel's own website. We have no arrangement with the hotel.
- Rooms
- 114 rooms and suites
- Opened
- November 1919, as the Ritz
- Architect
- Eduard Ferrés i Puig
- From the airport
- About 20 minutes from El Prat
The hotel
The Ritz that lost its name.
Francesc Cambó and Gonzalo Arnús built the hotel, and César Ritz agreed to lend it his name; he died in 1918, a year before it opened. Eduard Ferrés i Puig was the architect. Strikes pushed the opening back a month, to 23 November 1919, with 190 rooms and a staff of four hundred. Sixty more were added for the International Exposition of 1929.
Dalí treated it as his Barcelona home, Xavier Cugat lived here until 1990, and Freddie Mercury met Montserrat Caballé in one of the lounges in March 1987. A dispute over the Ritz brand went to court in 1988 and ended in a settlement in 2005 that took the name away. The building, and much of its spirit, stayed the same.
- Rooftop Garden On the seventh floor, with the Sagrada Família in view, a pool, and drinks from the afternoon into the evening.
- Art Suites Created in the works of 2016 and 2017, each one dedicated to a former guest such as Dalí, Joséphine Baker or Joan Miró.
- Mayan Luxury Spa A spa decorated on Mayan themes, with a fitness centre in the hotel.
Rooms & suites
Suites named after the guests.
Rooms range from classic doubles to family suites with three bedrooms, and several suites carry the name of someone who stayed here.
- Rooms Classic and Superior rooms The two entry categories, before the junior suites and Grand Deluxe rooms.
- Art Suites Dalí, Baker and Miró suites One or two bedrooms, each decorated after a former guest.
- Music Ronnie Wood suites One or two bedrooms named after the Rolling Stones guitarist; the one-bedroom suite has a Wurlitzer jukebox.
Dining
Seafood, a grand hall and a roof garden.
Restaurants as listed by the hotel; the MICHELIN listing is from the MICHELIN Guide España. Shown for information.
- Amar Barcelona MICHELIN Guide Mediterranean seafood, contemporary Catalan Rafa Zafra
- Grand Hall All day and afternoon tea Live music
- Rooftop Garden Drinks and dining Seventh floor, facing the Sagrada Família
- El Jardín Breakfast In the hotel
Recognition
Recent awards.
- Travel + Leisure Best Hotel in Barcelona, July 2026
- Condé Nast Traveller Readers' Choice Awards No. 4 in Spain, 2025
- Les Clefs d'Or Best Concierge in Spain, 2025
- Condé Nast Traveler Spain Best Gastronomic Hotel, 2025
Good to know
Before you go.
- Pets Dogs up to 8 kg, one per stay, with a daily supplement. Tell the hotel before arrival; access to the restaurants and bars is limited.
- Families A three-bedroom Family Suite and a two-bedroom Family Room.
- Next door The Passeig de Gràcia is a short walk away.
Getting there
Flying to Barcelona.
Barcelona-El Prat is about twenty minutes away by car. Private jets use the general aviation terminal at the same airport, open around the clock, and the hotel arranges airport transfers.
- Ibiza 40 min
- Nice 1 h 00
- Paris 1 h 25
- London 1 h 50
- New York 8 h 25 long-range jet
Questions
What guests ask first.
- Was El Palace Barcelona the Ritz?
- Yes. It opened as the Ritz on 23 November 1919 and lost the name after a court dispute over the brand, settled in 2005.
- Does El Palace Barcelona have a rooftop pool?
- Yes. The Rooftop Garden on the seventh floor has a pool and looks towards the Sagrada Família.
- Does the hotel accept dogs?
- Dogs up to 8 kg, one per stay, with a daily supplement and notice before arrival.
- Can SkyCourtage arrange the flight to Barcelona?
- Yes. We arrange Business and First Class seats on scheduled airlines and private jet charter to Barcelona, with one final price, our margin included. The hotel is booked with the hotel or through our booking partner.
Also in Barcelona
Other hotels worth the trip.
- Mandarin Oriental Barcelona A former bank entered by a glass footbridge, with a rooftop pool and the only two MICHELIN Keys in the city.
- Monument Hotel Eighty-four rooms in a nineteenth-century mansion it shares with the three-star Lasarte.
- The One Barcelona Rooms by Jaime Beriestain, some with terraces facing the Sagrada Família, and a plunge pool on the roof.
- Alma Barcelona Just off the Passeig de Gràcia, with private balconies, large bathrooms and an indoor pool styled on a Japanese onsen.
- Serras Barcelona The building that held Picasso's first studio, now loft-style rooms looking over the marina.
- Almanac Barcelona Opened in 2018 in the former offices of an insurer, with ninety rooms and suites and the Azimuth bar on the roof.
- Mercer Hotel Barcelona Twenty-eight rooms built against the Roman wall, where Rafael Moneo restored medieval arches and twelfth-century frescoes.
- Hotel Miramar Barcelona Up on Montjuïc, with an outdoor pool and suites that look out to sea.
- METT Barcelona Seventy rooms in a building more than a century old at the top of Tibidabo, and a spa with indoor and outdoor pools.
- Majestic Hotel & Spa Barcelona Its SOLC restaurant takes vegetables from the hotel's own farm in the Maresme, a short walk from Casa Milà.
- Hotel Casa Fuster A house of 1908 by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, with 105 rooms and the two-star Aleia on the first floor.
- Hotel Arts Barcelona Bruce Graham's tower of forty-four floors and exposed steel, beside Frank Gehry's golden fish on the beach.
- Claris Hotel & Spa In the Palacio Vedruna of 1883, which keeps a small museum of pre-Columbian pieces and a pool on its terrace.
- Grand Hotel Central The 1920s home of Francesc Cambó, whose books still fill the library, with an infinity pool on the roof.
- W Barcelona Ricardo Bofill's glass sail at the end of the beach, with 473 rooms and the NOXE restaurant on the twenty-sixth floor.
- The Barcelona EDITION One hundred rooms next to the Santa Caterina market, some looking over its roof, and a plunge pool on the terrace.
- Eurostars Grand Marina Part of the World Trade Center on the harbour, with 291 rooms two minutes on foot from the Columbus monument.
- Hotel Neri Twenty-two rooms in a twelfth-century palace on the Plaça de Sant Felip Neri, in the old Jewish quarter.
- Hotel Bagués For more than a century the Bagués-Masriera jewellery workshop occupied this building of 1850 on La Rambla.
Staying at El Palace Barcelona?
Book the room, then the flight.
Rates and availability come from the hotel itself. For the journey to Barcelona, a Business or First Class seat or an aircraft of your own: tell us the date and we come back with one final price, our margin included.
Opens the hotel's own website. We have no arrangement with the hotel.