Casa 52

A Colonial Update

A redesign by architect Manuel Rodriguez of Oriundo Taller, this Centro Historico home’s Spanish Colonial, Art Deco and mid-century modern influences have been massaged into a serene sanctuary, ideal for unwinding luxuriously, overlooking an overflowing private garden and plunge pool sunken in the tropical vegetation.

An elegant redesign, this colonial-era home at the heart of Mérida’s historical center stands out for its subtlety. Svelte, stately common rooms rise upwards 20 feet under steel beams, infusing the space with a breezy Mediterranean estate quality. Gleaming, pasta tile floors offer refined, artful ornamentation via uniquely patterned layouts. Arched entries and décor accents create a curving design theme, and oversized arched doors and windows echo the luxury of ancient orangeries. The generous openings spill out to the courtyard garden overflowing with monstera leaves and palm, wide elephant ears and lush banana trees. Flanking one side of the home, a shaded patio runs alongside the pool—a space for sitting, reclining or hammock swaying.

AROUND

Located two blocks from Mérida’s “Culinary Row,” Calle 47, and the Paseo de Montejo’s mansions, the home is also walking distance to the boisterous Plaza Grande that spreads out in the shadow of the prominent San Idelfonso Cathedral at the heart of the Centro Historico. The main street (and the meeting point of Méridians for decades), the buzzy Paseo de Montejo is home to trendy restaurants, hip bars, clubs and boutiques, but its best-known points of interest are its luxurious mansions, including the twins, or Casas Gemelas, the extravagant Palacio Cantón that houses the Museum of Anthropology and History, El Minaret (now a restaurant), and the 1902 mansion Quinta Montes Molina. 

A buzzy culinary hot spot, Mérida offers multiple locations for sampling its signature Yucatecan cuisine, from white tablecloth destination restaurants to lower-brow, family-run street food outposts like those that fill the Parque de Santiago. Gastronomy in Mérida uses an abundance of tropical produce that fills local market stands, uses cocoa from farms occupying the dense jungle villages beyond the city limits, and celebrates pre-Columbian foods that have been artfully reincarnated at the hands of hip young chefs turning out new versions of cochinitia pibil and papadzules. 

Named a Conde Nast Traveler “Best Place to Go in 2023,” the buzzy city is a design-lovers dreamscape, too, overflowing with concept stores, artisan perfumers, artists’ boutiques and upscale makers’ spaces. The Great Museum of the Maya World reflects Merida’s Mayan heritage, and reveals that over 60 percent of modern Méridians are of Mayan descent. 

Centrally located in the Yucatán peninsula, one of the World’s Seven Wonders, Chichén-Itzá, stands an easy 75 miles east of the city, and the UNESCO listed Mayan ruin of Uxmal is about an hour and a half’s drive south. The pueblos mágicos of Valladolid and Izmal are also close by and worth exploring. Cenotes, or natural sinkholes in the region’s limestone bedrock that once served as water supplies for the ancient Maya, are part of what define the Yucatán Peninsula, where more than 10,000 of these deep blue swimming holes are located.

LOCATION

Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico. Nearest airport: Mérida (20 minutes)

BEST TIME TO VISIT: Year round