URSO Hotel and Spa: thirty eight rooms in Chamberi, and the shrewdest booking in Madrid

Thirty eight rooms in a 1913 palacete in Chamberi, and the only hotel in this company that a sensible person might book without a deep breath. The neo-classical facade is original, so is the wrought-iron lift, and almost nothing else is, which is exactly the right way round. URSO opened in 2014, joined Small Luxury Hotels of the World, and has spent a decade being quietly better than its price.

It behaves like a small hotel rather than a scaled-down large one. There is no lobby scene, no rooftop and no ballroom, and the only people in the building who are not staying in it are the ones who have booked the spa.

The building

A palacete is a townhouse with ideas above its station, and this one was built for a family in the year the Gran Via was still being cut through the city. The restoration kept the staircase, the facade and the lift, which is the sort of birdcage contraption that people photograph, and put a contemporary hotel behind them without any of the mock-heritage fussiness that usually follows.

The result reads as a private house that happens to be extremely well run. For a certain kind of traveller that is worth more than any amount of marble.

The spa

Natura Bisse, in the basement: three treatment rooms, a hydrotherapy pool and a hammam. It is small, and it is open to people who are not staying, which is the detail that tells you it is a real spa rather than an amenity. Madrilenos book it on its own merits, and in this city that is the strongest endorsement available.

Being small, the slots matter. Book before arrival and take an early one, and you will have the place more or less to yourself.

The rooms

Considerably better than the rate suggests. High ceilings on the lower floors, excellent beds, marble bathrooms and blackout that actually works, which matters more in Madrid than in most European cities.

Because it is an old building converted rather than purpose-built, the shapes vary a great deal and two rooms at the same grade can differ noticeably in size. One short email asking for the largest available in your category is well worth sending, and a small hotel is far more likely to say yes to it than a large one.

Chamberi

The real reason to book, and the thing that will decide whether it suits you. Chamberi is a residential district fifteen minutes north of the tourist centre: nineteenth century blocks, a covered market, wide pavements, and the highest concentration of good, unpretentious, locally-patronised restaurants in Madrid. Nobody here is selling anything to visitors.

The trade is walking distance to the monuments. Sol is twenty five minutes on foot or six on the metro, so a monument-a-day itinerary will involve the metro each morning, which is cheap, fast and pleasant. For a longer stay built around eating well and living like a resident, this is the correct base in the city and everywhere else on this list is a compromise.

The others sell you the building. URSO sells you the postcode, and over a week the postcode is the better product.

Food

Breakfast is good and unfussy, taken in a bright room off the courtyard, and there is a small restaurant that does what it needs to. The hotel has sensibly not tried to compete with its own neighbourhood, which contains forty better dinners within a ten minute walk, and any member of staff will happily point you at the right one.

What the rate buys

Four hundred and forty euros against seven hundred and sixty at Villa Magna, for a bed you will sleep in just as well, a spa you will get into more easily and a neighbourhood that most people end up preferring. Across five nights the difference funds an extremely good week of dinners.

What you give up is theatre. There is no rotunda, no piano, no eighth-floor pool, and if that sense of occasion is the point of the trip then one of the larger hotels will serve you better. If it is not, this is the shrewdest booking in Madrid and it is not especially close.

The particulars

• Where: Mejia Lequerica, Chamberi, six minutes on the metro from Sol.
• Ask for: the largest room in your grade, and a lower floor for the ceilings.
• Book ahead: the spa. Three treatment rooms is not many.
• Do not miss: dinner within four streets of the hotel, in any direction.
• Best for: stays of four nights or more, and second trips to Madrid.