Canny visitors, exploiting a lull in Colombia's internecine strife, are returning to the country in record numbers. The informed flock to Cartagena, once Spain's finest colonial outpost, where 300-year-old palaces, churches and mansions, framed by fortifications built to withstand Francis Drake, are washed in delicate shades of peach, ochre and sunflower. French-born Thierry Forte created La Passion, a shabby-chic hotelito, from a ruined, 19th-century mansion in the old walled city, surrounded by a photogenic maze of cobbled alleys, leafy plazas and shadowy backstreets. A two-year restoration uncovered the centrepiece granite staircase and the original plasterwork, now artfully exposed from beneath dozens of paint layers. The carefully nurtured spectacle of decaying grandeur is enhanced by distressed, Louis XIII-influenced furniture, rough-hewn wooden benches and fecund sprays of banana and bamboo. Eight grandiose rooms offer sanctuary from the Caribbean sun, each sparsely decorated with items picked up on Forte's travels, such as a latticed table lamp from Moorish Spain or a Shiraz rug from Iran. Revamped curios include vast bathtubs of brushed concrete and a wooden fishing boat ingeniously reborn as a ceiling-hung swinging sofa for lazy afternoons. On sultry nights - and every night in Cartagena seems to be sultry - the roof terrace beckons, with its view of the city's peach-coloured cathedral, the blue Caribbean beyond and a swimming pool of translucent ultramarine.
WHEN TO GO
The months from December to April are the least humid.
ROOM TO BOOK
Ask for a room with a balcony overlooking the street.
Calle Estanco del Tabaco 35-81, Cartagena (00 57 5 664 8605; www.lapassionhotel.com). Doubles from US$180 |
