The Best Hotels in Seville, and Who Each One Is Wrong For
Best all-round: EME Catedral MercerAlmost every good hotel in Seville is a converted Sevillian house, so the real choice is which layout you get: the patio you eat breakfast in, and the roof you retreat to at four in the afternoon. Every walk below was routed to the cathedral, not estimated.
Which is the best hotel in Seville?
EME Catedral Mercer, if the view is the point: it faces the cathedral and its roof terrace looks straight at the Giralda, two minutes from the door. Hotel Simon is the best value in the old town by a distance. Ignore both if you want a real swimming pool, because Seville's rooftops are mostly plunge pools.
Which one fits how you travel
Find the row that sounds like your trip. Every pick below names the traveller it is wrong for, so you can book on fit rather than on rank.
| If you are | Book | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Here for the view above all | EME Catedral Mercer | 123 metres from the cathedral, roof facing the Giralda. |
| Watching the budget but wanting the real thing | Hotel Simon | An 18th-century patio house three minutes from the cathedral. |
| Travelling outside high summer | Hotel Casa 1800 Sevilla | The one old-town rooftop pool open every day of the year. |
| On a honeymoon or a quiet week | Corral del Rey | Seventeen keys, and three penthouses with private plunge pools. |
| Travelling solo | La Banda Rooftop Hostel | The nightly rooftop dinner solves eating alone in a late-dining city. |
| Wanting a real swimming pool, not a dip | Hotel Alfonso XIII | A garden pool rather than a rooftop plunge. |
| Curious what a Sevillian house actually is | Las Casas de la Juderia | Twenty-seven houses and forty patios knitted into one hotel. |
- Free cancellation on most rooms
- No booking fee
- Prices on Trip.com
What the bands mean
Rates are shown as bands, not numbers. Seville's hotels swing harder by date than almost any city in Spain, because Semana Santa and the Feria de Abril fall in consecutive weeks and treble the going rate, and August empties the city in the other direction. A printed nightly figure would be wrong within days. The bands describe where each hotel sits against the others, and the live rate for your dates opens through the button on each card.
- €
- hostels and small guesthouses, still inside the old town
- €€
- mid-range, where most of the palacio conversions sit
- €€€
- upper tier, usually for the patio or the roof
- €€€€
- the city's landmark addresses
The 9 hotels, and who each one is wrong for
Walking times are to Seville Cathedral. Walking times are real pedestrian routes to Seville Cathedral, measured through OpenStreetMap foot routing at 4.5 km/h. The cathedral is the anchor because it is the one point every visit passes through and because the old town is small enough that the whole list fits inside a twenty-minute walk of it. Seville is flat, so unlike a hillside city there is no climb to report and the distance is the whole story. One caveat the numbers cannot carry: from June to September the average daily maximum is above 33 degrees and reaches 36.4 in July and August on the 1991 to 2020 normals, so a ten-minute walk at two in the afternoon is a different proposition from the same walk at ten at night, which is when Seville actually goes out.
Santa Cruz, facing the cathedral
EME Catedral Mercer
€€€€Best all-roundA 16th-century Andalusian building on Calle Alemanes, directly opposite the cathedral, with a rooftop pool looking at the Giralda.
- Walk to Seville Cathedral
- 2 minutes, 123 m to the cathedral to Seville Cathedral
- Right for
- A first visit where the view is worth paying for. Nothing else on this list is 123 metres from the cathedral, and the rooftop faces the Giralda squarely rather than obliquely.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone who wants quiet. You are on the cathedral's doorstep, and the rooftop bar is one of the best-known public terraces in the city, which is a lot of people arriving at your hotel who are not staying in it.
- The catch
- The catch: The rooftop pool is guests-only and the hotel says so plainly, but the bar is not, so the terrace you booked for is shared with the city most evenings. The pool itself is a dipping pool, not a swimming one.
Between Santa Cruz and Alfalfa
Hotel Palacio Pinello
€€€A 15th-century palace on Calle Segovias with a courtyard well and a rooftop terrace almost under the Giralda.
- Walk to Seville Cathedral
- 3 minutes, 250 m to the cathedral to Seville Cathedral
- Right for
- Anyone who wants the palacio experience without the landmark price. The hotel's own site dates the building to the 15th century, which makes it the oldest fabric on this list, and the roof terrace has the closest Giralda view of the mid-range options.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone expecting resort facilities. There is a terrace and a courtyard and that is the offer.
- The catch
- The catch: Several published round-ups call this adults-only. The hotel's own site says it welcomes guests of all ages, so if you were counting on a child-free stay, that is not what you are booking.
El Arenal, by the cathedral
Hotel Simon
€Best valueAn 18th-century Andalusian house on Calle Garcia de Vinuesa with a fountain courtyard, 50 metres from the cathedral on the Arenal side.
- Walk to Seville Cathedral
- 3 minutes, 260 m to the cathedral to Seville Cathedral
- Right for
- Travellers who want the classic Seville courtyard and do not want to pay palacio rates for it. This is the cheapest way on this list to sleep inside a real 18th-century patio house in the old town, with rooms advertised from 53 euro on the hotel's own site.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone who needs a roof terrace or a pool, because it has neither. The courtyard is the outdoor space and in August that is a meaningful difference.
- The catch
- The catch: It is an old building run as an old building: rooms vary a great deal, and the ones off the courtyard hear the courtyard. Book it for the patio and the price, not for consistency.
Santa Cruz, on Calle Rodrigo Caro
Hotel Casa 1800 Sevilla
€€€A restored 19th-century house built around a light well, with the only rooftop pool in the old town open every day of the year.
- Walk to Seville Cathedral
- 5 minutes, 370 m to the cathedral to Seville Cathedral
- Right for
- Anyone visiting outside high summer who still wants the roof. The hotel states its rooftop pool is open 365 days a year from 10am to 8pm, which almost nothing else in Seville can say, and it measures itself at 130 metres from the cathedral.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone who wants the roof to themselves in July. It sells day passes to non-residents in summer, so the busiest months are also the ones when the terrace is shared.
- The catch
- The catch: The pool is small and the hotel publishes no dimensions. Treat it as a place to cool off between sights rather than somewhere to swim lengths.
El Arenal, on Calle Dos de Mayo
La Banda Rooftop Hostel
€A seven-dorm hostel whose rooftop runs a nightly communal dinner and live music with the cathedral in view.
- Walk to Seville Cathedral
- 6 minutes, 478 m to the cathedral to Seville Cathedral
- Right for
- Solo travellers, who get the hardest problem in Seville solved for them: the city eats late and in groups, and the nightly rooftop dinner here means you are not doing that alone.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Light sleepers and anyone travelling as a couple who wants privacy. It is a social hostel and the roof is a venue.
- The catch
- The catch: Some areas have no lift, which matters with heavy luggage, and the rooftop programme that makes it worth booking runs directly above the dorms.
Alfalfa
Corral del Rey
€€€€A 17th-century casa palacio across three buildings with only 17 keys, and penthouse suites that each have a private plunge pool.
- Walk to Seville Cathedral
- 7 minutes, 536 m to the cathedral to Seville Cathedral
- Right for
- Couples who want the smallest, quietest luxury house on this list. Seventeen keys in a restored palacio with original stone porticos is a different experience from a 134-room conversion, and the three penthouses have their own terrace and plunge pool.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Families and anyone who wants facilities. There is a roof terrace with a small pool and a bar, and nothing resembling a resort.
- The catch
- The catch: The private plunge pools are the reason to book and they belong to three rooms only. Everyone else shares a small rooftop pool, so confirm which room you are getting before you pay for the picture you saw.
San Bartolome, the old Jewish quarter
Las Casas de la Juderia
€€€Twenty-seven traditional houses linked by passages into one hotel, with more than forty patios and 134 rooms.
- Walk to Seville Cathedral
- 10 minutes, 760 m to the cathedral to Seville Cathedral
- Right for
- Anyone who wants to understand what the courtyard house actually is. This is the point of the whole category made physical: twenty-seven separate houses knitted together, so you walk between patios and cellars to reach your room.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone in a hurry or with limited mobility. Finding your room through a warren of linked houses is charming on night three and tiresome on night one with a suitcase.
- The catch
- The catch: At 134 rooms it is far larger than it feels, and the room you get varies enormously across twenty-seven buildings of different quality.
Puerta de Jerez, beside the Alcazar gardens
Hotel Alfonso XIII
€€€€The city's landmark hotel, purpose-built between 1916 and 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition, with a garden pool rather than a rooftop.
- Walk to Seville Cathedral
- 13 minutes, 960 m to the cathedral to Seville Cathedral
- Right for
- A special trip where the building is the point. It is the one hotel here that was designed as a grand hotel rather than converted from a house, and it has a genuine garden swimming pool, not a rooftop dipping pool.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone looking for intimacy or value. It is the most public, most photographed hotel in Seville and it is priced accordingly.
- The catch
- The catch: The pool is reported as seasonal, roughly April to October, and Marriott's own pages refuse automated requests so we could not confirm the dates from the operator. Ask before you book for the pool.
Santa Catalina, east of the cathedral
CoolRooms Palacio Villapanes
€€€€A baroque palace built in 1729 for Admiral Lopez-Pintado, with 50 rooms, a rooftop plunge pool and a ground-floor spa.
- Walk to Seville Cathedral
- 14 minutes, 1.1 km to the cathedral to Seville Cathedral
- Right for
- Travellers who want a genuinely grand palacio in a quieter quarter. Santa Catalina is the old town without the Santa Cruz tour groups, and the building is a listed 18th-century baroque work.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone whose plan is to walk out of the door into the sights. At 14 minutes you are on the far side of the old town from the cathedral.
- The catch
- The catch: The hotel calls its rooftop water a plunge pool in its own words, and states it opens for the season rather than year-round. The spa downstairs is the more reliable amenity.
Where not to book in Seville
There is no unsafe part of central Seville to steer anyone away from, so the traps here are all about what you are actually buying. The first is the word pool. Seville's rooftop pools are overwhelmingly plunge pools: dipping tanks a metre deep, not places to swim, and several are seasonal even though the city is hot from May to October. If swimming matters, the honest options are a garden pool like the Alfonso XIII's or a hotel outside the old town, and our where-to-stay guide covers where those are. The second is the roof itself, which in Seville is often a public bar as well as a guest terrace, so check whether the hotel sells day passes before assuming the view is yours. The third is the calendar, and it is brutal: Semana Santa and the Feria de Abril fall within a fortnight of each other in spring, both fill the entire city, and rates treble while minimum-stay rules appear. The fourth is August, when the average daily maximum is 36.4 degrees and much of the city closes; a hotel without a courtyard or a roof to retreat to is a much worse hotel that month than it is in April.
When to book
Seville's year has two spikes and one collapse, and they are all worth planning around. Semana Santa and the Feria de Abril arrive within a fortnight of each other in spring and are the hardest weeks in Spain to book well: the good old-town rooms go six months or more ahead and rates treble, so if your dates are fixed to either, book as early as you are able. October and November are the connoisseur's months, warm and clear with the crowds gone and rates at their most reasonable, and six to eight weeks out is comfortable. August is the strange one: the heat empties the city and rates fall, so you can book late and do very well, provided you accept that sightseeing happens before eleven and after seven. Whatever the month, if a courtyard room or a specific rooftop is why you are choosing a hotel, book direct and say so, because in buildings this old the rooms are not interchangeable.
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Photo credits (9)
Photos via Wikimedia Commons, used under their respective licences.
- Seville cathedral and the Giralda seen from the square outside: Lancastermerrin88 - CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
- The Giralda bell tower in Seville seen over orange trees: Diego Delso - CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
- A street in the El Arenal quarter of Seville: Feranza - CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
- A whitewashed lane hung with flowers in Barrio Santa Cruz, Seville: Heinz Joerg Kretschmer - CC BY 3.0 · source
- The Torre del Oro on the riverside in El Arenal, Seville: Heinz Joerg Kretschmer - CC BY 3.0 · source
- Terrace tables on a square in the Alfalfa quarter of Seville: erikccooper - CC BY 2.0 · source
- Calle Santa Maria la Blanca in the old Jewish quarter of Seville: Pedro Szekely - CC BY-SA 2.0 · source
- The Hispalis fountain at Puerta de Jerez in Seville: CarlosVdeHabsburgo - CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
- The church of Santa Catalina and its Mudejar tower in eastern Seville: Zarateman - CC0 · source