Mandarin Oriental Ritz, Madrid: the grande dame, restored to within an inch of her life

The Ritz exists because Alfonso XIII got married in 1906, looked around for somewhere to house the visiting royalty, and found that the capital of Spain had nothing suitable. He part-funded the answer himself, brought in Charles Mewes, who had done the Ritz in Paris and the Carlton in London, and opened it in 1910 facing the Prado across the Plaza de la Lealtad. For most of the century afterwards it traded gently on that story.

Then it shut in 2018 for what was announced as a refurbishment and turned into something closer to an excavation. Two years, a reported hundred and thirty five million euros, and a rebuild that went down into the ground as well as through every floor above it. What reopened is the most complete restoration of a European grand hotel in living memory, and it has produced something genuinely strange: a hundred and fifteen year old building that feels younger than the new-builds down the road.

The ground floor

Begin here, because this is the thing you are actually buying. The central rotunda sits under a restored glass dome that had been boarded over for decades and was rebuilt from the original drawings. Off it run the garden terrace, a long room with a piano that is played properly rather than politely, and a bar that has become one of the few rooms in Europe where hotel guests are outnumbered by people who simply wanted to be there.

At seven in the evening it fills with a mix of residents, Madrilenos and couples who have booked a table with no intention of staying the night, and that mix is rarer and harder to engineer than any amount of marble. Most grand hotels have a beautiful lobby that only guests ever see. This one has a room the city uses.

You will spend more waking hours down here than upstairs, which is worth knowing before you choose a room category.

The rooms

Superior rooms begin around thirty square metres, which is modest for the money and entirely honest about the building: this is a 1910 floorplan and there is a limit to what can be done behind a protected facade. Within that, the finish is exceptional. Dark oak floors, marble bathrooms, Natura Bisse from Barcelona in the bathroom, and glazing that genuinely defeats the Plaza de la Lealtad, which is a working roundabout.

The rooms facing the interior garden are the ones to ask for. The view is quieter than the Prado side and so is the room, and after the first morning you will stop looking out of the window and start noticing how well you slept. If you want space rather than address, the junior suites on the upper floors are a real step up and the corner ones have two aspects.

The spa

The newest thing in the oldest building, and the clearest evidence of how far the restoration went: before 2018 the hotel had no spa whatsoever. There was nowhere to put one, so they dug.

What came out is an underground floor with a heated pool wrapped entirely in white marble, a vitality pool, experience showers, a steam room and a properly equipped gym. It is not the largest spa in Madrid and it has never pretended to be. What it has instead is a room that looks carved rather than fitted, and almost nobody in it, because a hundred and fifty rooms produce far fewer swimmers than four hundred do. Swimming alone in that pool at eight in the morning is one of the better things you can do in this city.

The Four Seasons ten minutes away has the larger spa. The Ritz has the better building to walk back up into.

Food

Genuinely strong, and worth taking seriously rather than treating as hotel food. Breakfast is the honest test of any hotel at this level and this one passes without effort: eggs cooked to order rather than held, Iberian ham carved in front of you, and pastry made in the building rather than delivered to it. Taken on the garden terrace in May or early June it is the best breakfast in Madrid, and it is worth getting up for.

Dinner is ambitious and priced to match. You are also in a city where the third-best restaurant on most streets is very good, so there is no obligation either way. Both options are legitimate here, which is not true everywhere in this bracket.

What the rate buys

Seven hundred and fifty euros is the floor rather than the average, and once breakfast, a treatment and two drinks in the rotunda are added, a night here passes a thousand euros without much trouble. That is a great deal of money for thirty square metres, and it is worth being straightforward about it.

What it buys is the building and the ninety minutes a day you spend in the public rooms, which is genuinely where the value sits. Judged as a bedroom it is expensive. Judged as access to the finest interior in Madrid, with a bed attached, it is fairly priced and arguably underpriced against what the restoration cost. Two or three nights is the sweet spot: long enough to stop feeling like a visitor in the rotunda, short enough that the arithmetic stays comfortable.

The particulars

• Where: Plaza de la Lealtad, between the Prado and the Retiro, with the Thyssen and the Reina Sofia both walkable.
• Ask for: a garden-facing room, and a terrace table for breakfast.
• Book ahead: the spa. It is small, and Saturdays go a fortnight out.
• Do not miss: the rotunda at seven, whether or not you are eating.
• Best for: a first trip to Madrid, an anniversary, or anyone who cares more about a building than a gym.