The five best spa hotels in Madrid, and which spa earns it

Spa hotels in Madrid are a recent invention, and that is the first thing worth knowing. Madrid arrived late to the spa. For most of the last century the city's grand hotels competed on ballrooms and dining rooms, on the assumption that nobody flies to Madrid to lie down. Then the Ritz closed for two years, the Four Seasons opened seven buildings knocked into one, and within about five years every hotel on this list had excavated its basement.

The result is a city where the spas are genuinely new, genuinely large, and almost all underground, because there was nowhere else to put them. What follows is five that are worth using rather than five that merely exist. Several hotels in this category have a treatment room and a sauna and describe it as a wellness concept. Those are not here.

Rates below are the lowest published for a standard double, before tax, outside August and outside the December fair weeks. Madrid moves more than most cities: the same room can double for a conference or a Bernabeu fixture.

Mandarin Oriental Ritz

The oldest of the five and the only one that was already famous. Built in 1910 at Alfonso XIII's insistence because the city had nowhere to house visiting royalty, closed in 2018, and reopened after a restoration that cost more than most hotels cost to build.

The spa is the newest thing in the oldest building: an underground floor with a heated pool wrapped in white marble, a vitality pool, experience showers and a steam room. It is not the largest spa in the city and it does not try to be. It is the most beautiful.

What you are really paying for is the position. The Prado is across the road, the Retiro is two minutes the other way, and the ground floor is one of the best rooms in Europe to sit in at seven in the evening.

From about €750 a night. Read the full review.

Four Seasons Hotel Madrid

Seven historic buildings on the Canalejas block, joined behind their own preserved facades, and the largest urban spa in the city by a wide margin: 1,450 square metres over four floors, eight treatment rooms, a couple's suite, and a fourteen metre pool under a skylight on the eighth floor with a sun terrace looking north over the rooftops.

That pool is the single best argument for this hotel over the Ritz. Swimming at roof height in the middle of a European capital is a rare thing, and in July it is close to essential.

The service is the other argument. This is repeatedly described by people who stay in a great many Four Seasons as the strongest of the company's city hotels, and the difference shows in the ordinary moments rather than the grand ones.

From about €580 a night. Read the full review.

Rosewood Villa Magna

The one on the Milla de Oro, which is the stretch of Serrano and the Castellana where the money shops. Villa Magna was a fixture of Madrid business life for forty years, went to Rosewood, and came back as a mid-century-modern hotel rather than a marble one, which makes it the only property here that does not feel like a restored palace.

Sense, A Rosewood Spa runs a Finnish sauna, a steam room, a hot tub and a hammam finished in Turkish marble, plus a fitness floor that is better equipped than it needs to be. The two bars are the reason a lot of people book: they are among the few hotel bars in Madrid where locals outnumber guests.

Stay here if you want Salamanca rather than the centre, and if you would rather walk out into shops than into a plaza.

From about €760 a night. Read the full review.

The Madrid EDITION

The youngest and the loudest. Ian Schrager's brand in a new build on Plaza de Celenque, three minutes from Sol, with the largest luxury rooftop pool in the city on the fourth floor: twenty five sunbeds, five cabanas, and a view across the roofline that people book the hotel to sit in.

The spa proper is smaller than the marketing suggests: a twenty four hour gym and five treatment rooms working with Natura Bisse. Good, not the reason to come.

The pool is the product. Everything else is the building it sits on top of.

Book it in June or September, ask for a room away from the pool deck, and understand what you are buying. This is a hotel with a scene attached, which is either exactly right or exactly wrong depending on the week you are having.

From about €390 a night. Read the full review.

URSO Hotel & Spa

The only small one, and the only one under five hundred euros. Thirty eight rooms in a 1913 building in Chamberi, with the neo-classical facade and the wrought-iron lift kept and everything behind them made contemporary.

The spa is by Natura Bisse: three treatment rooms, a hydrotherapy pool and a hammam. It is open to non-residents, which tells you it is a real spa rather than an amenity, and it is small enough that booking a slot actually matters.

Chamberi is the argument. It is fifteen minutes north of the tourist centre, it is where people in Madrid actually eat, and the rate reflects the postcode rather than the hotel, which is the best kind of mispricing.

From about €440 a night. Read the full review.

The five spas compared

The hotels are easy to tell apart. The spas are the part nobody sets out side by side, so here they are on their own terms rather than their hotel's.

• Four Seasons: the largest by a distance. Fourteen hundred and fifty square metres over four floors, eight treatment rooms, a couple's suite, and a fourteen metre pool under a skylight on the eighth floor with a sun terrace. The only one where you could spend a full day without getting bored.
• Mandarin Oriental Ritz: the most beautiful and not the biggest. An underground floor in white marble with a heated pool, a vitality pool, experience showers and a steam room. Built for an hour, not an afternoon.
• Rosewood Villa Magna: the best circuit. Finnish sauna, steam room, hot tub and a hammam finished in Turkish marble, with a fitness floor better equipped than the hotel needs. No swimming pool, which is the thing to know before booking.
• URSO: the smallest and the only one under five hundred euros a night. Three treatment rooms, a hydrotherapy pool and a hammam, by Natura Bisse.
• The Madrid EDITION: the weakest spa and the best pool. Five treatment rooms and a twenty four hour gym, under a fourth floor rooftop pool that is the reason anybody books.

Put plainly: swim at the Four Seasons, sweat at the Villa Magna, look at the Ritz, sunbathe at the EDITION, and pay least at URSO.

Using the spa without staying

A good number of people searching for spa hotels in Madrid do not want a room at all. They want an afternoon. That is a reasonable thing to want and the answer is inconsistent, so it is worth knowing how it actually works.

URSO is the clearest of the five: its spa is open to non-residents, and that openness is a decent sign that it is a real spa rather than an amenity bolted onto a room rate. The Four Seasons runs day and weekend wellness packages through the spa directly, booked by email or telephone rather than through the website.

The others do not publish a policy, which is not the same as refusing. Hotel spas of this kind frequently take outside bookings on a quiet weekday and never on a Saturday, and the person who knows is the spa reception rather than the hotel's booking page. Email the spa, name a date, and ask. It takes one message and it is the only reliable way to find out.

Two things hold everywhere. A treatment usually buys you the wet areas for the rest of the day, which makes a massage the cheapest route into a pool you could not otherwise use. And weekend slots go a fortnight ahead in every one of these, resident or not.

Which one to book

• First trip to Madrid, want the postcard: Mandarin Oriental Ritz. You will spend more time on the ground floor than in the room, which is the point.
• Travelling in July or August: Four Seasons, for the eighth floor pool. Nothing else here comes close in heat.
• Here for shopping or business: Rosewood Villa Magna. Salamanca is the reason, the bars are the bonus.
• Under forty, here for the weekend: The Madrid EDITION, in shoulder season, with a quiet room.
• Watching the rate, staying a week: URSO. The saving over the others funds a great deal of dinner.

One thing that applies to all five: book the spa before you arrive. Every one of these is open to non-residents in some form, and the good slots on a Saturday are gone a fortnight out. And if the trip is a short one, three days in Madrid is the itinerary we would build around them.