Castillo Hotel Son Vida

Five kilometres north-west of the centre of Palma, the road climbs through the gated estate of Son Vida to a castle on the ridge, its tower and battlements standing over the bay. The Castillo Hotel Son Vida opened as a hotel in 1961 with a party attended by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco, and the guest list of that night set the tone for the house in the decades that followed, when film actors and heads of state came for the privacy of the hill.

History

The Son Vida estate goes back to the 13th century, when a farmhouse on the hill above Palma took the name it keeps. The castle in its present form is a 19th-century rebuilding of that house, with tower and crenellations. In the 1950s the estate was bought with a hotel in mind, and the Castillo opened in 1961 as a luxury hotel above Palma at the moment when the island's new airport was opening Mallorca to northern Europe. Three years later, in 1964, the Son Vida golf course opened beside it, the first course in the Balearic Islands. The Munich-based Schörghuber group took over the hotel and the land in the 1990s, added the Son Muntaner course in 2000 and Son Quint in 2007, and built a second hotel on the estate, the Sheraton Mallorca Arabella Golf Hotel. The Castillo later joined Marriott's Luxury Collection.

Architecture and design

The castle keeps its stone walls, its tower and its vaulted ground-floor rooms, which hold a collection of antiques, paintings and tapestries assembled over the decades. Bedroom wings were added behind and below the castle so that the silhouette seen from Palma stays that of the old house. Terraces step down the hillside to the pool, and from the upper ones the view takes in the whole bay, the cathedral and the Tramuntana mountains to the west.

Rooms and suites

There are 164 rooms and suites, split between the castle itself and the later wings. The castle rooms have the thick walls and the older proportions; the wing rooms are larger and face the bay or the golf course. The suites in the tower are the ones most often asked for.

Dining

The main restaurant occupies the castle's old dining rooms, with a terrace that looks over Palma, and a second, more informal restaurant serves by the pool in summer. The bar is in the vaulted rooms of the castle, and breakfast moves out to the terrace in good weather, which in Palma is most of the year.

Wellness

An outdoor pool sits on the terrace below the castle with the bay in view; there is also a heated indoor pool, a spa with treatment rooms and a gym. Guests have access to the three courses of Arabella Golf Mallorca on the estate, Son Vida, Son Muntaner and Son Quint, and to the spa of the sister Sheraton.

Weddings and events

Son Vida has been a Palma wedding venue since the 1960s. Ceremonies take place on the terrace with the bay behind the couple, and receptions move into the castle's salons or the ballroom in the newer wing. The hotel has meeting rooms for conferences and uses the golf courses for corporate days.

Location

Son Vida is a gated residential district on the hills above Palma. The city centre and the cathedral are about 15 minutes by car, the airport about 20 minutes. The hotel runs a shuttle into town, and the beaches at Illetes are 20 minutes to the south-west.