The Principal Madrid

The Principal Madrid

The Gran Vía is Madrid's great boulevard, a broad, theatre-lined street that cuts diagonally through the centre of the city from the Alcalá intersection to the Plaza de España, commissioned in the early 20th century and built over three decades through some of the most densely inhabited streets in the old city. It is loud, commercial, permanently in motion, and lined with some of the most extraordinary early 20th-century architecture in Spain, Beaux-Arts and Spanish Renaissance palaces of extraordinary ambition built at a moment when Madrid was declaring itself a modern European capital. The Metropolis Building at the corner of Alcalá and Gran Vía, its copper dome turning green above the street, is one of the iconic silhouettes of the city. By day the Gran Vía is shopping and theatre and tapas bars and endless foot traffic. By night it is one of the more reliably animated streets in Europe. To be on it is to be in the middle of everything. The Principal occupies the upper floors of a Spanish Renaissance building from 1917 at the corner of Marqués de Valdeiglesias and the Gran Vía, the first five-star hotel on the boulevard and voted number one hotel in Spain in the Condé Nast Traveler Readers' Choice Awards 2025. The entrance is discreet enough that you can walk past it, which is entirely in keeping with the character of the property. The lobby is on the sixth floor, reached by lift, and the sense of arrival once you are up there, looking out over the rooftops with the dome of the Metropolis directly opposite, is one of the better hotel moments in Madrid. There are 77 rooms and suites, each slightly different given the historic nature of the building, designed in a monochrome palette with brass accents, leather chairs, glossy black-tiled bathrooms, and a sophisticated restraint that keeps the energy of the street outside without importing it inside. The sixth-floor Ático restaurant, under the culinary direction of two-Michelin-star chef Ramón Freixa, serves avant-garde haute cuisine in a space that opens onto the terrace. The seventh-floor La Pérgola and Jardín rooftop are the main event on a clear evening, 20 scarlet sunloungers around a fountain, outdoor showers, and a view over Madrid's rooftops that on a clear day reaches the snow-capped Guadarrama mountains. The wellness suite, bookable privately for couples or individual sessions, handles the quieter moments. This is for the person who wants to be at the centre of Madrid's energy rather than adjacent to it, who finds a rooftop above the Gran Vía more interesting than a park view, and who understands that a discreet door on a famously busy street is its own form of privacy. The short version: A 77-room five-star boutique hotel occupying the upper floors of a 1917 Spanish Renaissance building on the Gran Vía, voted number one hotel in Spain by Condé Nast Traveler readers in 2025. Sixth-floor restaurant by two-Michelin-star chef Ramón Freixa, a seventh-floor rooftop terrace with views to the Guadarrama mountains, and a discreet entrance on the most famous boulevard in Madrid. Small Luxury Hotels of the World. For people who want to be at the centre of things.