◉ First GlanceOur report on opening day
- 🏨 The hotel · Áurea Palacio de la Tinta, a five-star hotel opened on 10 September 2026 at 20 Paseo de Reding, in Malaga, facing Malagueta beach.
- 🗝️ Capacity · 141 rooms, including seven suites and nine junior suites, within a 10,500 m² building constructed in 1908.
- 🏛️ The building · The former headquarters of the Compagnie des chemins de fer andalous, designed by engineer Julio Aublin Calas and opened on 23 March 1908. Facade and orange tree courtyard preserved.
- 🍽️ Dining · Asador Contrapunto for wood-fired cuisine, and La Danza, the rooftop bar open until midnight at weekends.
- 💧 The spa · Heated indoor pool beneath luminous vaulted ceilings, treatment cabins and relaxation area.
- 🏢 The operator · Eurostars Hotel Company, part of the Hotusa group. The first Áurea brand address in Malaga.
It once took litres of ink to fill out train tickets by hand. This is where the Palacio de la Tinta gets its nickname, the ink palace, headquarters of the Andalusian Railways Company since 1908, which on 10 September 2026 became a 141-room five-star hotel. The Áurea Palacio de la Tinta now occupies the 10,500 m² of this building on Paseo de Reding, a hundred metres from Malagueta beach.
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A palace born from the railways, and the ink of the ticket counters
The building was inaugurated on 23 March 1908 to plans by Julio Aublin Calas, chief engineer of the track and works department for the Andalusian Railways Company. Its fin-de-siècle Parisian style still stands out today in La Malagueta, a seaside district born around the same period. The locals nicknamed it Palacio de la Tinta for a very practical reason: the railway administration consumed large quantities of ink there every day, essential for issuing tickets by hand. The name stuck long after the railway workers left.
◆ The hotel in pictures
141 rooms, seven suites and nine junior suites
The conversion has retained what gave the location its identity. The facade and the orange tree courtyard have been preserved, as have the modernist stained glass windows lining the corridors, whilst the upper floors have been entirely redesigned to accommodate 141 rooms. Seven suites and nine junior suites occupy the finest spaces, some opening onto Paseo de Reding and the sea, others onto the interior courtyard. The decorative vocabulary remains understated, featuring light wood and powdery tones, allowing the architecture to speak for itself.
| Rooms and suites | 141 · including 7 suites and 9 junior suites |
| Inauguration | 10 September 2026 |
| Building construction | 1908 · Julio Aublin Calas |
| Surface area | 10,500 m² |
| Dining | Asador Contrapunto · La Danza rooftop |
| Malagueta beach | 100 metres |
| Alcazaba | 800 metres |
| Picasso Museum | 1.2 kilometres |
A spa beneath vaulted arches, a rooftop overlooking Malagueta
The spa occupies the lower levels, where the thickness of the old walls promotes peace and quiet. Its heated indoor pool stretches beneath a row of luminous arches, a design choice that owes as much to the palace’s structure as to its staging, accompanied by treatment cabins and a relaxation area. Eleven floors higher up, La Danza takes the opposite approach: a rooftop bar open from 11:00 to 23:00, and until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, offering views of the bay. On the ground floor, Asador Contrapunto focuses on wood-fired cuisine, open from 13:00 to 16:00 and from 20:00 to 23:00.
Áurea, the heritage brand of the Hotusa group
Áurea is Eurostars Hotel Company’s line dedicated to historic buildings: convents, palaces and stately homes converted into high-end hotels. Malaga is now home to its first address, in a city where the five-star offering has grown alongside cultural tourism. The Hotusa group, owner of Eurostars, operates over two hundred hotels in Europe, and this conversion forms part of a deliberate strategy: taking over protected buildings rather than building new ones in city centres where new land is no longer available.
Our perspective
The success of a heritage conversion is judged by what it has left untouched. Here, the 1908 facade, the orange tree courtyard and the stained glass windows survived the project, which was by no means guaranteed on a 10,500 m² construction site intended to yield 141 rooms. The commercial gamble is more conventional: targeting clientele visiting for Picasso, the Alcazaba and the beach, all within walking distance. It remains to be seen whether the rooftop, a mandatory feature of Spanish urban hospitality, will manage to stand out in a city that already boasts many.
Practical information
- Áurea Palacio de la Tinta · Paseo de Reding 20, 29016 Malaga · eurostarshotels.com
- Access · Malaga-Costa del Sol airport 20 minutes away · Maria Zambrano station 10 minutes away · Malagueta beach 100 metres away
- Dining · Asador Contrapunto from 13:00 to 16:00 and from 20:00 to 23:00 · La Danza rooftop from 11:00 to 23:00, midnight on Fridays and Saturdays
