Hotel of the Week: San Sebastián’s 1914 Belle Époque Cinema Reopens as a Contemporary Destination
The reimagined spaces feature sepia interiors, a proscenium arch entrance, and Lotu, a restaurant from chef Andoni Luis Aduriz’s IXO Group, occupying the old horseshoe balcony
After four decades as a vacant landmark in the center of San Sebastián, the Palacio Bellas Artes, one of Spain’s earliest cinemas, has reopened as a hotel. Original architect Ramón Cortázar, a pioneer of Basque design, drew on Paris’s Gaumont Palace for the Beaux-Arts building, which opened in 1914 at the height of the city’s Belle Époque. Today, the entrance runs across the former stage and the lobby opens into a double-height space where the orchestra seating once was.
Hotel Palacio Bellas Artes San Sebastián, Curio Collection by Hilton, debuted in July as the brand’s first hotel in the city, a project promoted by SADE, the family firm that has owned the building since 1914. “Restoring the property meant preserving its dome, façade, and original layout while creating a contemporary hotel shaped by its cinematic history,” says Brooke Thomas, brand leader of Hilton’s Curio Collection. The dome, dismantled in 2015, was rebuilt by architect Ignacio Quemada as an exact replica.
Isabel López Vilalta and Silvia Cabestany of ILV*, an interior design studio, designed the interiors, drawing on cinematic elements like balance, contrast, emphasis, movement, and repetition to shape the spaces, while light and color intensify at key points through the building, as if a camera were advancing through a sequence. The proscenium arch that once framed the performances is now the front door. “Crossing the proscenium arch becomes a symbolic threshold: from the real world into the world of fiction,” says López Vilalta.
The hotel’s color palette of dusty pinks, warm terracotta, and deep burgundy evokes the sepia tones of early films and photographic negatives. Those rich hues appear in the lobby floor made of Spanish marbles Rojo Alicante, a rosy red threaded with white, and Crema Marfil, a soft beige. “Its flowing geometry follows the architecture of the space, creating a pattern reminiscent of a drop falling into water, with ripples spreading outwards,” López Vilalta says. The suspended ceiling repeats the rings in a rosy hue, and a chandelier of textured glass, made with local fabricator Cianco, draws the eye up toward the mezzanine.
Similar shades envelop accommodations designed to provoke tranquility, with natural textiles, wood, and stone. The Rojo Alicante marble carries through to the bedside tables and baths—and even to gorgeous marbled tubs in select suites. Other guest quarters nod to the building’s original use with accommodations labeled Amphitheater rooms, spacious Grand Stalls, or Front Box suites, the latter tucked behind the main façade with the grand windows intact. Two Cupula suites—open-plan studios with a mezzanine lounge, a round pink sofa, and a private terrace—sit inside the rebuilt dome.
Each accommodation displays a work from Creation: Light, Movement and Gaze, a series of 81 pieces commissioned from Basque artist Lander Andonegi. “We wanted the art to be part of the building’s new life rather than simply decoration added to it,” she says.
Cinematic history also informs the hotel’s restaurant Lotu, which means “to tie” in Basque. A nod to the early 20th-century dining rooms where actors, writers and filmmakers gathered between premieres, the restaurant serves pâté en croûte, sole meunière and a beef Wellington in the style of La Tour d’Argent, alongside txangurro donostiarra, the classic Basque stuffed spider crab, and a Singaporean black pepper crab. Overseen by chef Andoni Luis Aduriz and his IXO Grupo, it’s the latest destination for the team which also runs Mugaritz, a two-Michelin-starred tasting-menu restaurant in nearby Errenteria built on experimental and avant-garde gastronomy.
Between atmospheric surroundings, star-powered cuisine, and a film-inspired soundtrack, the hotel has all the glamour of its original heyday while still preserving the authentic flavor of the city. “The care that went into the hotel’s design makes the hotel feel rooted in San Sebastián,” suggests Thomas, “as if it could only exist there.”