food & drink

The man behind this hotel is an Egyptologist. That is not a line most rooftop bars can offer.

Jordi Clos founded the Derby Hotels Collection and also founded Barcelona’s Egyptian Museum, and he has furnished his hotels the way a collector would rather than the way a procurement department would. The Claris holds over 400 antiquities – more than seventy Egyptian pieces among them, plus Roman mosaics and sculpture, Turkish kilims, English furniture and work by the Catalan painter Josep Guinovart – with a small museum of its own on the first floor. The building is neoclassical, dating to 1883, and became a hotel in 1992. La Terraza del Claris has been up top ever since, back when nobody thought of a roof as somewhere to send guests.

What that buys you now is restraint. The terrace is small, low-lit and deliberately discreet, looking out over the Eixample rather than performing for it, and the pool stays reserved for guests – which means it never converts into a day club at two in the afternoon. The kitchen leans Mediterranean and seasonal, with dishes like a white asparagus vichyssoise with crab tartare, or rice with red prawns and beach squid, and the cocktail list is longer and better than a hotel terrace strictly needs.

Go when you want the view without the scene. Those are rarer than they should be.