Casa Camper Barcelona

Class: First

Style: Cutting edge

Rooms: 25

There’s already a Camper shoe store on the main shopping drag of every city across Europe — it won’t be long before there’s a Camper hotel as well. Here in Barcelona’s arty El Raval district is the first of a projected chain of mid-priced boutique hotels by the Spanish-owned hipster footwear manufacturer.

Hip doesn’t have to mean precious, of course — in keeping with the Camper brand’s down-to-earth image, the Casa Camper is pared-down and unpretentious, at least as boutique hotels go. Platform beds and exposed shelving are just about all there is to these bedrooms, each painted a deep solid red or green, each with an impressively modern and clinical all-white bathroom and just one touch of decadence: the enormous and plush white towels and robes.

Perhaps the oddest feature about these rooms: they’re almost suites, but not quite. Bedrooms all line one side of the corridor, facing out back of the hotel for maximum quiet, and across the corridor from each one is a sitting room furnished with a flat-screen television, a hammock, and a balcony with a view down onto the street below. Maybe it’s just a creative solution to an architectural problem posed by this antique building, but the end result is a pleasant mingling of guests in the corridors, just the slightest hint of a sociable boarding-house atmosphere.

It’s nothing if not comfortable, but it’s not meant to be a bolt-the-door sort of luxury hideaway — a buffet breakfast and a light midday food service in the lobby lounge are enough to get you started, but beyond that you’ll want to get out and experience El Raval. There’s some kind of restaurant at every turn, not to mention cultural attractions like Barcelona’s museum of modern art, and some of the city’s best shopping is a short Camper-shoed walk from the Casa.