THE FACTS ABOUT LA PURIFICADORA

Mexico

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 Find out more about Mexico in our destination guides