Hotel Arts Barcelona

Two towers mark the point where the Olympic village meets the sea. One is an office block; the other, the taller lattice of white steel with Frank Gehry's gilded fish at its feet, is Hotel Arts Barcelona. Built for the 1992 Games and opened as a hotel in 1994, it was the first skyscraper hotel in Spain and set the standard for the seafront the Olympics created.

History

The Olympic planners cleared the old industrial shoreline of Poblenou and built the athletes' village with two 154-metre towers at its seaward edge, the Torre Mapfre and the hotel tower. Bruce Graham of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architect of the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center in Chicago, designed the hotel with the structure outside the glass. The building was finished for the Games but the hotel itself opened in 1994, managed by Ritz-Carlton, and the Ritz-Carlton group has run it ever since. The name refers to the contemporary Spanish art collection assembled for the public rooms and corridors.

Architecture and design

The exposed steel exoskeleton, painted white, is the building's signature: the diagonal bracing stands clear of the curtain wall, so the tower reads as a cage of steel around a glass core. At the base, Gehry's Peix, a 56-metre fish of woven copper-coloured steel, roofs the walkway to the beach; it was commissioned for the Games and has become a symbol of the city's seafront. The pool terrace sits at the foot of the tower above the marina, with gardens and the beach beyond.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has 483 rooms and suites across the tower. The lower floors hold the standard rooms, each with floor-to-ceiling glass and a view of the sea or the city; the top floors, from the 33rd upwards, are the Club and Penthouse floors, with duplex apartments decorated by Jaime Tresserra and a private lounge. Height is the point: from the upper rooms the whole of Barcelona lies in view, from Montjuïc to the Collserola ridge, with the Sagrada Família in the middle distance.

Dining

Enoteca Paco Pérez, on the ground floor, holds two Michelin stars for the Empordà chef's Mediterranean cooking and has a wine cellar of several hundred references. Arola, opened in 2001 with Sergi Arola, serves tapas on the pool terrace, and Bites and the Marina bar cover the day. The hotel has run a chef-in-residence programme that brought Barcelona chefs to its kitchens over the years.

Wellness

The spa, called 43 The Spa, occupies the 42nd and 43rd floors with treatment rooms and relaxation areas looking out to sea, one of the highest in the city. At ground level the outdoor pool and sun terrace sit above the marina with a second pool for children, and the fitness centre is open around the clock.

Weddings and events

Hotel Arts is one of Barcelona's largest event hotels. Its conference centre has a ballroom for several hundred guests and a suite of meeting rooms, and the garden and pool terrace take receptions in the open air with the sea as backdrop. Weddings use the terrace or the ballroom, with the Penthouse floors for small private dinners. Mobile World Congress, the medical conventions at the Fira and the Formula One weekend fill the house each year.

Location

The hotel stands on Carrer de la Marina at the edge of the Port Olímpic, on the beach, with Barceloneta and the old port a twenty-minute walk south-west and the Ciutadella park and the Born quarter fifteen minutes inland. Ciutadella Vila Olímpica metro station is nearby; Barcelona Sants station is twenty minutes by taxi, and El Prat airport about thirty minutes. As a luxury hotel in Barcelona it is the one that gives the city a beach at the door and the skyline from above.