With its historic location and dramatic design, La Purificadora is the most ambitious property yet from Mexico's maverick hotel company Grupo Habita. Housed in the shell of a 19th-century ice factory near Puebla's postmodern Convention Centre, the hotel pairs traditional colonial charm with austere modernity courtesy of father-and-son architects Legorreta + Legorreta. Stepping through the wooden doors of the original stone-and-stucco façade, guests enter a towering courtyard with a black lava staircase rising on one side and a narrow canal cascading down its centre. Angular purple banquettes are placed around a pair of fire pits, and the hotel's restaurant lies beyond a series of grand wooden columns. The 26 bedrooms, on the middle two floors of the four-storey building, have transparent cupboards and floors clad either in parquet or black and white tiles, a nod to Puebla's ceramics industry. All have floor-to-ceiling glass walls facing the 16th-century church of St Francis; 14 have bijou, glass-walled balconies. There is a lounge bar and a sleek, infinity-edged pool on the roof terrace. In the ground-floor restaurant, guests sit at long, communal tables while baby-faced chef Enrique Olvera prepares a modern Mexican menu.
WHEN TO GO
The annual Day of the Dead festival in early November, when the local bakers create skull-shaped goodies and everyone covers the graves of their dead in orange marigolds.
ROOM TO BOOK
Room A for its wraparound terrace and transparent Jacuzzi.
Callejón de la 10 Norte 802, Paseo San Francisco, Barrio el Alto, Puebla, Mexico (00 52 222 309 1920; www.lapurificadora.com). Doubles from US$182
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