In room 622 of the Barceló Torre in Madrid
Sleeping with views of Gran Vía is like sleeping with a television broadcasting a program that you can't stop looking . You brush your teeth before going to bed and look out the window. turn off the light and you look out the window . You're thirsty in the middle of the night and you look out the window . A dream (good, bad or average) wakes you up and you look out the window. You see how the first light of dawn sneaks in and you look out the window . You laze around and look out the window from afar. You wake up, you get up and you look out the window sticking his nose to the glass. Sleeping in a room with views of Gran Vía can mean not sleeping. Who cares: we have already slept many nights.
Views of Gran Vía from 622
There are many ways to sleep looking at Gran Vía . We can choose many places along your 1,316 meters . There are pensions, shelters, hotels and hotelazos. There are dilapidated, photogenic, huge, minimal, functional, spectacular, with myths, without them, classic or open since yesterday. The majority look at Gran Vía from sidewalk to sidewalk. That's enough of a show because in their 25 meters wide Many things can and do happen. Furthermore, this width (such that it once accommodated a boulevard that was demolished in 1921) allows for a wide street angle. All views of Gran Vía are good , but there is one that is strange. It is frontal, almost shameless. It is the one you have from the ** Madrid Tower **.
The Tower of Madrid, imposing itself on the left
The Tower of Madrid is a skyscraper. Although there is no architectural consensus on how tall a building must be to be considered so, it is admitted that if it exceeds 100 meters it deserves that name. This tower reaches 142 meters. It was built between 1954 and 1960. Let's not call it seventies: it is not . For years, how we like a record, it was the tallest concrete building in the world and, until the Lollipop snatched the title from him in 1982, the highest in Spain.
From afar it looks like a somewhat crude building, not brutalist, but that feeling disappears when you are close to it or inside it. Working with concrete is elegant , as are the balconies and their corners. Many more things have happened in this building than we can fit in these lines. In addition, we do not want to take away the prominence of the Gran Vía, which is what we have come to talk about. Mental note: write something specific about La Torre de Madrid on another occasion.
Princess Suite Room
If we are interested in this building, it is because it houses a hotel that overlooks Gran Vía . There that guests always ask for: “high and with a view”. And the staff, solicitous, try to give "high and with a view". They have nine plants for it . His 258 rooms many look at this street, but it is the 622 who confronts her. Being on the corner of Plaza de España allows you to look at the street with a perspective impossible to find from another hotel.
Plus, this hotel has more than just views. has that thing called personality . The Barceló Tower of Madrid (it's name was inevitable) is the big bet of the group. It opened three months ago with the desire not to look like any other hotel in the city and to start a brand. For this they called Jaime Hayon , one of the rock stars of the international design world, to invent his image. He decided to play with the Spanish clichés from a stylish and light place.
If they told us that in a hotel lobby we were going to find a photograph of a fallera or a bullfighter, we would have started to tremble. The reality is that they are so elegant and modern like the balconies of the Tower of Madrid. The chosen color palette (pistachios, cobalt blue, pale pink) is interesting, as are the furniture , some with pedigrees and others designed by Jaime Hayón himself, who also has one. It is a hotel designed for the wow effect from when you cross the door that leads to Plaza de España. That sense of wonder culminates when you enter a privileged room and look out the window. Or you go out to the terrace of said room, if we are even more privileged.
Jaime Hayón's decoration, with an interesting color palette
The Suite 622 It has such a terrace. It is small, but it is a terrace . If we place ourselves in it and begin to sweep, we see many cities and times in one. If we look to the right we see the Madrid of the 50s , with its powerful buildings with ditto portals, we keep looking and it appears a piece of parisian paris but right away, boom, there's the Royal Palace, he's so regal. We keep looking to the left and see rooftops background They could be from any Mediterranean city. They are few but there they are and, suddenly, a building appears that could be in Hamburg and we continue to look around. We stop her for a moment in the same square, with its statue of Cervantes and its people coming, coming and staying. We soon left the trees and looked up. There is Gran Via. It is somewhere between Broadway, Regent Street, Corrientes and the main street of a Spanish province. It is neither the most luxurious street in Madrid, nor the greenest, nor the most elegant. It is Gran Vía and does not need adjectives.
Views of the Royal Palace from Barceló Torre in Madrid
But hotels are more than rooms. Even if we don't sleep in 622 we can still have views of Gran Vía. We see it from the restaurant we are, that has some tables, right on the corner, which are a spectacle. We see her from breakfast area , which we can access (with its fourteen types of very modern breads and milkshakes) without having to stay , and we have them from the lobby, which is located on the second floor and which is impossible not to photograph.
Imagine a breakfast like this
But the luxury because that's where luxury is defined ) it is look from the window or the terrace of 622. It's hypnotic. The view ranges from the Edificio España (it looks like one in Detroit before it was abandoned) to Plaza de Callao. This section was called from 1937 to 1939, Avenida de Mexico. Traditionally it has been the stretch of leisure and culture, cinemas (there were thirteen), parties and restaurants. It is the liveliest section of Gran Vía . It changes by the minute, the light does, the rhythm of your life too.
In the morning it is commercial, passing through, tourist; As the day progresses and the natural light goes out, the neon lights come on. The street mutates and changes clothes . It's time for theaters, musicals, cinemas (there are two left) and the hunger that comes before and after them. It is the hour of the full taxis, of the groups of people occupying the sidewalk. This lasts all morning. There is only one moment when she is calm or, better, stretching: It's at 9 in the morning on a Sunday . That feeling lasts for a moment. Soon someone turns on a switch and the party begins.
And the Gran Vía that never rests