Hotel Colón Gran Meliá

The Hotel

The Hotel Colón opened on 1 March 1929 — at the same moment as the Alfonso XIII — as the second of the two principal hotels commissioned for the Ibero-American Exposition. The architect José Espiau y Muñoz designed both buildings, but where Alfonso XIII follows the Sevillian Mudéjar revival vocabulary, the Colón was given the Belle-Époque grand-hotel register: a marble-floored octagonal lobby beneath a vast original stained-glass cupola, sweeping double staircase, and the kind of silvered-Sevillian detailing characteristic of the city's 1920s peak. The building stood as the Hotel Colón until 1991 when it was acquired by Meliá; comprehensive restoration completed in 2009 reopened the property as Hotel Colón Gran Meliá. The location, Calle Canalejas at the corner of Avenida Reyes Católicos, places the hotel two minutes on foot from Plaza Nueva, four from the Cathedral, and two from the Triana bridge across the Guadalquivir.

The 189 rooms — including 47 suites — are arranged across the building's five floors. Standard categories begin at 28 square metres; the named Royal Suite at 110 square metres is the milestone unit, on the top floor with views across the central streets toward the Cathedral. The RedLevel programme — Gran Meliá's concierge-floor offering across the top three floors — provides a private lounge, dedicated check-in, and the all-day food-and-drink programme as a separate booking class. Bathrooms are travertine; bath products are Clarins, Gran Meliá's signature.

El Burladero is the headline restaurant — opened in 1929 as the hotel's main dining room and named after the wooden barrier in a bullring (a burladero), with a wall of original Sevillian bullfighting photographs preserved from the original 1929 collection. The kitchen runs an Andalusian register with Iberian-pork and Atlantic-seafood emphasis; the restaurant has been the principal hospitality dining room of the Sevillian bullfighting establishment for nearly a century. The Lobby Bar runs the all-day cocktail and aperitivo programme beneath the original stained-glass cupola — the most-photographed interior in the building. The Tertulia bar runs the evening cocktail programme. There is no spa or pool, the principal limitation of the offer relative to the Alfonso XIII and the Mercer; the fitness centre is on the lower-ground level.

The Calle Canalejas position is the booking proposition. From the front door it is two minutes to Plaza Nueva, four minutes to the Cathedral and Giralda, two minutes to the Maestranza bullring, three minutes to the Plaza de la Magdalena, two minutes to the Triana-bridge crossing, and ten minutes to the Real Alcázar. For travellers prioritising the central-walking Belle-Époque grand-hotel booking with the most-photographed lobby in Andalusia, this is the right Seville address. The Alfonso XIII is the Mudéjar-and-pool alternative; the Mercer is the small-and-rooftop alternative; the Colón is the grand-hotel-with-stained-glass-cupola alternative.

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