Wealthy landowners built this French-style mansion in Mérida’s historic center during the mid-19th century, when the surrounding Yucatán countryside had turned to henequen cultivation, the region’s dominant crop after independence from Spain. Fiber grown on the family’s plantation was shipped to Europe for processing into rope and twine, and the fortune it generated financed the mansion’s elaborate furnishings and finishes, many of them imported directly from the continent.
Original architectural details, including the building’s structural columns, flooring, and much of its door and window trim, remain intact within the hotel today. The mansion sits close to Paseo de Montejo, the grand boulevard where Mérida’s henequen-era elite built similarly ornate residences to display their wealth during the industry’s peak, and it’s now a short walk from the city’s colonial-era cathedral and central plaza, both dating to the earliest years of Spanish settlement in the Yucatán.