Hostería Las Cancelas

The house

Las Cancelas is a three-star hotel in a former 15th-century inn on calle Cruz Vieja, halfway between the cathedral and Plaza de Santa Teresa. Its website recalls that the street used to be known as "of Death and Life". The building is arranged around the inn's old columned courtyard, which is now the restaurant's dining room, and downstairs there is also a tapas bar with a wine list.

Rooms

It has 14 rooms, with rustic furniture; those on the top floor have sloping attic ceilings. According to the rooms page, six are doubles with two beds, five are doubles with a double bed and three are triples, and the website presents them in single, double, triple, double-bed and modern categories. All have air conditioning, heating, flat-screen television, free wifi, safe, telephone and a full bathroom. An extra bed and a cot can be requested, which the hotel has to confirm.

The website does not publish fixed prices: they can be checked in its booking engine. For those who book directly it advertises high-speed wifi, offers at the bar and restaurant, and early check-in or late check-out subject to availability. It has a 360-degree virtual tour so you can see the rooms before choosing.

Eating without going out

The restaurant serves seasonal Castilian cooking in the columned courtyard: grilled Ávila beef rib steak, oven-roasted suckling pig and lamb, El Barco beans, patatas revolconas and Castilian soup, among other dishes on its menu. It has its own page at the Hostería Las Cancelas Restaurant. In summer Los Patios de la Catedral, its terrace, opens across the street for a meal or a drink outdoors.

What it does not publish

The website does not give check-in and check-out times, nor its own parking, nor its pet policy, and it shows no phone number either: contact goes through the form in its booking engine. If you arrive by car, bear in mind that the old town has narrow streets and ask where to leave it before you go.

Who it is for and what is nearby

For sleeping in the centre without a car and dining in the courtyard downstairs. The cathedral is a couple of minutes away, and from there you go down to the city wall by the Puerta del Alcázar. The Basilica of San Vicente and the Monastery of Santo Tomás are within walking distance, and the Cuatro Postes mean crossing the river, best at dusk.