“It felt like a huge responsibility,” confirms Laura Acevedo, who oversaw the project as the director of concept and design for the project’s developers, the Santo Domingo family. “The property is so unique, so everything in it had to be unique.” The choice of Catroux—who is best known for his residential properties—as one of the lead designers for the property was very much intentional. “We didn’t want the hotel to feel like a hotel,” Acevedo continues, noting that this was also why they designed so many of the details from scratch with the help of local artisans. “It felt like an opportunity to show the world what can be done here in Colombia.”
It’s a directive that came from the very top. “From the beginning, this was about allowing the destination to lead, ensuring the architecture and interiors feel considered, respectful, and inseparable from Cartagena itself,” Alejandro Reynal, the president and CEO of Four Seasons, tells me later. It is, he says, a “perfect representation” of how he sees the future of the brand: “entering destinations thoughtfully, partnering closely with local communities, and creating experiences that immerse guests in their surroundings.”
That connection to its surroundings is palpable across every space of the hotel, from the breathtakingly intricate fresco of a lush tropical scene that adorns the ceiling of the Grand Grill—a classic American steakhouse that marks Carbone founders Major Food Group’s first venture into South America, and serves a mean prawn cocktail—to the Art Deco glass doorway surroundings and inlaid wood mirrors scattered throughout the property. “Even if you don’t pay attention to every little detail, I think you can feel it,” says Acevedo. “There’s a harmony to it all.”
You really can feel it: in the soothing creams and black tones that ribbon their way through every space, or the airy corridors that flawlessly seam one building to the next, or the evident respect for its bones. (I was especially charmed by the stone column that peeked out of the wall in my room.) Though over the course of my three nights in Cartagena, the corner of the hotel I grew most fond of was right outside my bedroom: a wicker chair and cushioned footstool overlooking the hushed cloisters, where four colossal banyan trees sit in the center, their tendrils dappled with different shades of sunlight throughout the day. It doesn’t get much lovelier than that.
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