The Grand Hotel

At a time when modest hostels were the only option to stay in Palma, The Grand Hotel appeared in the city in 1903. The emblematic building of modernist movement, the work of the renowned architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner (author of the International Hotel, the Palau de la Música and the Hospital de Sant Pau, Barcelona), represents the pioneering of luxury in Mallorca.

Its ornate facade with sculptural elements and ceramics (from La Roqueta) announced the first tourists unprecedented facilities to date with a level of luxury and comfort that placed it in the first place nationwide until the inauguration of the Ritz hotel in Madrid.

El Águila & Can Rey

Both buildings share part of the metallic structure of the lower body.

Can Rey, is a five story multi family dwelling that features a fantastic front part with winged dragons on the lower part of the second floor balcony, which serves as the center axis of the facade, a multitude of small ceramic mosaic like plates called trecandís of various colours, of a strong Gaudinian influence.

The neigboring building, the Almacenes El Águila, was designed in 1908 by Gaspar Bennassar, architect in charge of designing Plaza de Toros.

To achieve a greater interior natural lighting, iron was used, also present as a decoration for the dynamic corrugated iron railings. The polychrome ceramics and a profuse vegetal and floral decoration that follows the modernist trend of art nouveau stand out.

The building contains Modernist elements of Viennese tendency in the form of the façade and the geometry of its composition. The building's central motif with a semi-circular arch; its ornamental treatment and the coronation of the ensemble recall the Karlplatz metro station in Vienna, designed by the architect Otto Wagner who was a precursor of the Viennese secessionist movement.