Commissioned by King Alfonso XIII to coincide with the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition, the building that became Hotel Alfonso XIII was designed by José Espiau y Muñoz in a Neo-Mudéjar register that draws freely from Moorish, Renaissance, and Baroque Sevillian traditions — a deliberate act of architectural synthesis at a moment when Spain was performing its cultural identity for an international audience. The white-plastered facade, enriched with polychrome azulejo tile panels, arched loggias, and a distinctive octagonal corner tower capped in glazed ceramic, presents as a civic monument rather than a hotel building, which is precisely what Espiau intended. Managed today under Marriott's Luxury Collection, the 151-room property sits on the edge of the Jardines del Cristina, with the Giralda tower visible just above the roofline at dusk. Inside, the interiors draw on the same layered Andalusian vocabulary. Coffered timber ceilings with decorative plasterwork cornices crown the guestrooms, where carved ebonized headboards reference Moorish geometries and Murano-glass chandeliers throw warm light across chevron-patterned rugs and terracotta marble floors. The restaurant's arched brick arcades, covered with hand-painted tile dados and exposed decorative beams, open through tall steel-framed glazing onto a planted courtyard — a spatial move that keeps the building's historic bones fully legible while admitting Andalusian light. The pool terrace, banked with banana palms and wrapped by the sandstone garden wing, sustains that same balance between grandeur and ease that has defined the property since its inauguration nearly a century ago.

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