Rosewood Villa Magna

Paseo de la Castellana, number 22, between the Plaza de Colón and the shops of Calle de Serrano, was the address of the Palacio de Anglada, a 19th-century mansion in a garden, until the 1960s. The Hotel Villa Magna rose on the site and opened in 1972, and the Rosewood Villa Magna in Madrid keeps the address, the setback from the avenue and the garden in front.

History

The Palacio de Anglada had been built in the 1870s for the banker Juan Anglada and was demolished in the late 1960s, one of several Castellana mansions lost in that decade; the hotel garden is what survives of its grounds. For its first decades the Villa Magna was the Castellana hotel of choice for visiting executives and performers, and through the 1990s and 2000s it traded as the Park Hyatt Villa Magna. It went independent in 2009. The Mexican group RLH Properties bought the hotel in 2018, closed it the following year and handed it to Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, which reopened it in October 2021 as the group's first hotel in Spain after a renovation of two and a half years.

Architecture and design

The building is a block of the early 1970s set back behind a garden and a drive, which gives it more air than any of its neighbours on the avenue. The renovation stripped the interiors to the structure. BAR Studio of Melbourne designed the new ones, with much of the furniture, stone and metalwork made in Spain, and the ground floor was reorganised so that the lobby, the bar and the patisserie open onto the garden through tall windows.

Rooms and suites

There are 154 rooms and suites. Those on the Castellana side look down the avenue through floor-to-ceiling glass; the rest look into the Salamanca streets behind. The suites take the upper floors and the corners, and the largest have terraces.

Dining

Amós is the restaurant of Jesús Sánchez, whose Cenador de Amós in Cantabria holds three Michelin stars; his Madrid kitchen serves Cantabrian cooking in the hotel's main dining room, drawing on the coast and its hinterland, anchovies, cheeses and the stews of the valleys, on a shorter menu than at the mother house. Las Brasas de Castellana is the grill, with an open fire and a terrace on the avenue. Flor y Nata, a patisserie and café, opens onto the garden, and Tarde.O is the cocktail bar.

Wellness

The spa, on the lower floors, has an indoor pool, a thermal circuit and treatment rooms, with a gym open to guests at all hours.

Weddings and events

The Villa Magna has hosted Madrid weddings since the 1970s. The ballroom and a series of salons on the lower floors take weddings, dinners and conferences, and the garden terrace serves for cocktails before a reception moves indoors. Rosewood kept the ballroom in its role and added a run of smaller salons for boards and private dinners.

Location

The hotel sits among the luxury hotels of Madrid's Salamanca district, with Calle de Serrano one block behind and the Plaza de Colón two blocks south. The Museo Arqueológico Nacional and the Biblioteca Nacional stand on Calle de Serrano five minutes away, and the Plaza de Colón, with its monument to Columbus, marks the southern end of the Castellana hotel row. The Retiro park is 15 minutes on foot and the Prado 20. Colón and Rubén Darío metro stations are the closest. Chamartín station is 15 minutes by taxi, Atocha about the same, and Madrid-Barajas airport around 25 minutes.