Where to stay in Marbella: the best areas and hotels

Forget the bling for a moment. Marbella's Old Town is a knot of narrow whitewashed lanes, geranium pots on every wall and tiny squares where tapas bars spill out under the orange trees. Its heart is Plaza de los Naranjos, Orange Square, ringed by café tables and as pretty at breakfast as it is at midnight.

Hotels here are small and full of character: a Relais & Châteaux heritage hotel with three restaurants, a restored seventeenth-century building with terracotta floors and every room themed differently, and intimate boutique hostals with rooftop terraces. The beach is five minutes downhill, though you may find you never quite make it past lunch.

Between the Old Town and the sea, central Marbella is where the real town lives: shops, offices, the Alameda park and Avenida del Mar with its line of Dalí sculptures leading down to the beach. The Paseo Marítimo runs for kilometres along the shore, perfect for an evening paseo with an ice cream in hand.

This is the most practical base in Marbella. You can stay on the seafront in a hotel set in gardens with two pools, beside the marina in promenade apartments, or a few streets back in a modern four-star that recommends itself to adults. The Old Town is a short walk, Puerto Banús a short taxi ride, and Málaga airport roughly 30 to 45 minutes by car.

The Golden Mile is the stretch of coast between Marbella town and Puerto Banús, and it is where Marbella's legend was born. Grand villas hide behind high walls, palm trees line the boulevard, and the hotels are some of the most celebrated on the Mediterranean.

Expect an Andalusian village-style resort in subtropical gardens with a roster of famous restaurants, the storied Marbella Club with its half-dozen restaurants and babysitting for the little ones, a sleek five-star with a sushi bar and two pools, and a modern four-star where every room gets a balcony. Prices are high, but so is the polish.

It is not a place for wandering: the town and the port are a short drive or a long beach walk away. Most guests here are perfectly happy not to leave the gardens.

Puerto Banús is Marbella with the volume turned all the way up. The marina is lined with yachts the size of apartment blocks, the quayside is a parade of Gucci, Dior and Lamborghinis, and the bars and clubs behind it fill up long after dinner. People-watching is the national sport.

Hotels range from a rock 'n' roll themed four-star with a rooftop pool to a Moorish-style resort a few steps from Rio Verde beach, a whitewashed hotel with tiled roofs and a big outdoor pool, and a compact boutique hotel with an airport shuttle. Marbella town is about 15 minutes away, which suits most of the crowd here just fine.

Climb inland from Puerto Banús and the coast gives way to Nueva Andalucía, known locally as Golf Valley for the courses packed into its folds, and beyond it the hill village of Benahavís. It is greener and quieter than the coast, with the mountains close enough to touch.

This is golfers' country. One palatial resort here has three courses, a racquet club and over a thousand works of art on its walls; another wraps its spa around a golf course and runs a free shuttle to the beach. Down by the sea at Guadalmina, near San Pedro, a colonial-style four-star sits within easy reach of the sand, and further west a beachfront five-star in vast gardens looks across to Gibraltar and the coast of Africa.

You will want a car, or a good relationship with a taxi driver.

East of the town, the coast relaxes. Los Monteros, Las Chapas and Elviria are leafy residential districts of villas and pine trees, the beaches are long and less crowded, and at Cabopino a little marina sits beside protected sand dunes.

The hotels are big, generous and family-friendly: a much-loved beachfront five-star with Andalusian styling and two beach clubs, a Kimpton about 400 metres from the sea, a resort with five pools including two indoors, and a golf hotel with a free beach shuttle. Marbella town is a 15-minute drive and the airport about 35 minutes, so this end also cuts the transfer.