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Room Mate Collection Gorka, San Sebastián
San Sebastián, Spain · Room Mate · Accessible Luxury
The hotel is named for Gorka Atorrasagasti, the Donostiarra who founded Room Mate with Kike Sarasola, and the chain spent years hunting a building in his home city worth the name. It settled on Plaza de Gipuzkoa 11, a protected nine-storey front on the porticoed square Jose Eleuterio de Escoriaza drew in 1866. Behind it sit 33 rooms, three of them duplex suites, several with terraces, and a ground-floor bar open to the square, looking out at Pierre Ducasse's 1877 gardens and the duck pond every child in San Sebastian has fed.
- 33 rooms
- Opened 2018
- Rooms from 226 sq ft (21 m²)
About Room Mate Collection Gorka, San Sebastián
- Room Mate dropped its usual design fireworks here: the nine-storey facade is one of the protected symbols of Plaza de Gipuzkoa, so the building had to stay exactly as the city knows it and the boldness went inside.
- The gardens across the street were laid out by the French landscaper Pierre Ducasse in 1877 and still hold a meteorological pavilion, a marble hour table that once fired a small solar cannon on the hour, and a pond with a waterfall, swans and ducks.
- Facing the square is the Diputacion Foral de Gipuzkoa, Jose de Goicoa's neoclassical palace, seat of the provincial government since 1885, with busts of Basque navigators along its front.
- Interiors are by the San Sebastian studio Cuarto Interior, who nodded to the La Concha promenade throughout, down to the glass lattices that screen reception from the bar.
- Entry-level rooms start at 226 sq ft (21 m²).
History
Number 11 on Plaza de Gipuzkoa is a nine-storey building on San Sebastian's most representative nineteenth-century square, protected at grades C and E under the city's built-heritage plan. Room Mate had wanted a San Sebastian address for years, and Kike Sarasola has said finding one in the centre was the hard part; the chain finally took the building on a lease of at least twenty years from its owner and gutted the interior while leaving the protected front intact.
Room Mate Gorka opened in August 2018 as the chain's first hotel in the Basque Country and its twenty-fourth overall, named in tribute to Gorka Atorrasagasti, the San Sebastian businessman who founded the company alongside Sarasola and Carlos Marrero. It has 33 rooms across three categories, including three duplex suites and several with terraces, plus a wellness area, a meeting room and a lobby bar open to the public from the square. The interiors are by the local studio Cuarto Interior, working in a quieter, more classical register than the chain's usual, and the house now trades under the Room Mate Collection banner.
The setting
Plaza de Gipuzkoa is the centrepiece of the Ensanche that San Sebastian built after its medieval walls came down, a porticoed square of roughly 10,000 square metres between the old town and the Avenida de la Libertad. Jose Eleuterio de Escoriaza drew the plan in 1866 and the buildings went up between 1867 and 1882; the great arches that were meant to close the entrances were never finished, though you can still see where they were to spring from. Pierre Ducasse filled the middle with romantic gardens in 1877, planted with shrubs and trees given from the Aiete and Cristina Enea estates and fenced off until 1907. Inside are the monument to the composer Jose Maria Usandizaga by Jose Llimona, a floral clock, a meteorological column and the pond. The Diputacion Foral has faced the square since 1885, La Concha and the old town are both a short walk, and the Parte Vieja pintxo bars start a few streets north.
Restaurants and bars
- Lounge Bar Desayunador — Bar
Experiences
- La Bretxa Market — Lively market mentioned as a nearby experience.
- Miramar Palace gardens — Peaceful walk through the gardens of Miramar Palace.
- Monte Urgull — Climb for a panoramic view of the city.
Amenities
- Free Wi-Fi
- Terrace
- Bar
- Guest-only loading and unloading area
- Luggage storage
- Meeting rooms
- Photocopies
- Ticket sales
- Room service
- Restaurant
- Concierge
- Breakfast until midday
- Wi-Fi gratuito
- Terraza
- Área de carga y descarga exclusiva para huéspedes
- Guardaequipajes
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