Yurbban Passage Hotel - Barcelona, Spain

By any yardstick, Barcelona is a city blessed with impeccable genes, and like a true urban supermodel, it has few, if any, bad angles. The latest folly in town to take advantage of this fact is the 60-room Yurbban Passage Hotel & Spa.

Two years in the making, the project was a complicated one that involved the incorporation of the extant Passatge de les Manufactures and renovation of a late 19th-century building in the city’s El Born, an ancient quarter that once heaved with merchants, artisans and workshops.

Against architectural firm BCA’s quiet intrusions and preservation of period details like the main staircase and façade rosettes, the interior designer Raquel Sogorb has fashioned an equally thoughtful space for the five-storey hotel. The rooms, especially, sport a handsome patina of paneled timber headboards, dark matt bathroom fittings and wire chairs.

The spa, meanwhile, clad in stone wall, vaulted ceiling and cast-iron pillar – and featuring vegan treatments – is a subterranean counterpoint to the rooftop pool and terrace with views of the cathedral and Santa Maria Del Mar.

And while gourmets will be thrilled to find the laureled chef Xavier Franco in the kitchen of D’Aprop serving up oysters with a chardonnay marinade, and a cold veal tataki with cabernet grapes and onions, it’s worth noting that the hotel’s gift-shop features locally sourced fashion accessories and homeware curated by Nuovum.