Hotel Salobre, Palma de Mallorca

We arrived in the slanting gold of a late-April afternoon, when Palma's old town smells of orange blossom and warm stone, and slipped off Carrer del Conquistador into a doorway you could easily miss. Inside, Hotel Salobre opens into a marès-sandstone courtyard, the classic Mallorcan patio, ringed by worn arches and a stone staircase, now planted with olive trees in oversized terracotta and lit, come evening, like a stage. A glass of hierbas over ice arrived as we took it in. The building was a merchant's palace, and the restoration has kept its honest golden stone while threading in clean lines, blackened metal, raw linen, the soft glaze of island ceramics. The effect is grand and relaxed at once.

The room

Our room sat on the first floor and showed off the building's bones, a beamed ceiling, a wall of bare marès sandstone, a tall window with louvred shutters. The design language was contemporary Mediterranean, all natural plaster, oatmeal linen and pale oak, warmed by Mallorcan craft: a hand-thrown water jug, a bedspread in the island's traditional llengües ikat, a single bold ceramic lamp. The bed was a cloud of percale. The bathroom paired micro-cement with brass and a deep walk-in shower, stocked with olive-oil soap from a Sóller mill. Storage was ample, a proper dressing area, a bench, real hangers, and the shutters, when closed against the afternoon heat, dropped the room into a cool, blue dimness.

The patio is the hotel's beating heart, golden stone by day, a low-lit cocktail garden by night.The Suite Edit

Service & food

Staff are easy and switched-on, equally happy to debate the merits of the city's vermouth bars or arrange a boat to a quiet cala. The courtyard becomes the restaurant after dark: a short, sharp menu of island produce, sobrassada, tomàtigues de ramellet, fresh-caught dorada, paired with Binissalem wines from the centre of the island. Breakfast is a generous spread under the arches, ensaïmadas, jamón, fruit, eggs cooked to order, and very good coffee. The rooftop, the property's other showpiece, holds a small plunge pool, a clutch of loungers and a sundowner bar that looks straight across the tiled roofs to the sandstone bulk of La Seu cathedral, glowing at dusk.

The verdict

Hotel Salobre is for the traveller who wants Palma's old-town soul with a design sensibility and a rooftop dip, couples, aesthetes, anyone using the city as a stylish base between coves. The patio and the cathedral-facing pool are genuine pleasures and the cooking punches above its weight. The honest caveat follows directly from the layout: the courtyard is the social engine, and on warm evenings the convivial buzz of the bar drifts up to the rooms that overlook it, sometimes past midnight. Light sleepers should request a room facing the street or the upper floor. Night owls will want a courtyard room and a seat at the bar.