El Ladron de Agua

Description:

• Set behind a frescoed 16th-century Italianate facade on one of Granada's impossibly narrow, evocative streets, this is the newest (2004) of the historic "boutique" hotels of the Albaicín. It's simpler, more stripped down, and less plush than its competitors. The name, El Ladrón de Agua (the Water Thief), references a collection of poems by Nobel Prize-winning Andalusian poet Juan Ramón Jiménez. Some of his verses are stenciled or highlighted in the form of metallic cutouts, or projected with laser beams onto the stark white walls of the hotel's artfully minimalist interior. You'll also find high-tech lighting and fountains from which -- in a nod to the hotel's name -- water dribbles out imperceptibly and is "stolen" away into drains virtually concealed from view. Whereas each of the bedrooms is comfortable and tasteful, with high ceilings, tiled bathrooms, and a combination of modern and antique accents, eight also have views over the Alhambra, which is perched high atop a forested hilltop on the opposite side of the river. Each room is named after a poem, or a snippet of a poem, by either Jiménez or his hosts during his sojourns in Granada -- artistic luminaries Federico García Lorca or Manuel de Falla.

• © Frommer's 2013