Casa Puuc, a small hotel in Mexico

Tranquil, Turn-of-the-Century Simplicity

A turn-of-the-20th-century architect’s creation, this stately home occupies a green corner bordered by the lush Parque de las Américas, Merida’s first residential development set just outside its historical center. Timelessly elegant, tranquil, with gently patinaed echoes of yesteryear, the residence-turned-seven-suite-hotel offers a bath of serenity and leisure.

Created as a spacious family residence in 1914 by architect Manuel Amabilis and his son, and converted into a timeless inn, the seven rooms of Casa Puuc define clean-lined sophistication with echoes of simpler days gone by. Sentinel palms and insulating vegetation create a park-like setting for a rectangular swimming pool and neatly manicured garden.

Rooms are brightened by generous Orangerie-styled or multipaned casement windows, patterned tile flooring, and 100% cotton linens held within matte, muted walls bearing the hushed patina of time. Breakfast is served each morning at a long farm table awash in filtered natural light. Spa services add to the focus on simple well-being and include facials, mani/pedi options and massage, by reservation. An in-lodge tienda offers a thoughtfully curated selection of the artisan goods featured in the inn.

AROUND

The hotel is opposite Mérida’s Parque de los Americas, designed by Ernesto Novelo Torres in 1943. The leafy zone within the elegant Garcia Ginerés subdivision is popular with families and offers evening dancing and food trucks on weekends. As the capital city of Mexico’s Yucatán region, Mérida puts both ancient Mayan and the region’s Spanish colonial heritage on dazzling display. Colonial-era churches and residences occupy the city’s leafy plazas like ancient fortresses and colorful mansions, and one of the World’s Seven Wonders, Chitzen Itza, is the most prominent of dozens of other sacred Mayan temple sites accessible outside of town.

Centrally located within Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, Mérida is known as “the white city,” an increasingly happening urban area that mingles 4,000+ year old indigenous Mayan cultural tradition with 16th-century Spanish colonial culture. Beyond history and archeology, gastronomy has become Mérida’s main draw, and exotic tropical produce fills local market stands, cocoa farms occupy dense jungle villages beyond the city limits, and pre-Columbian foods have been artfully reincarnated at the hands of hip, locally focused young chefs who turn out contemporary versions of cochinitia pibil and papadzules.

Chichén Itzá is 75 miles east of Mérida, and the UNESCO listed Mayan ruin of Uxmal is about an hour and a half south. Dozens of lesser-celebrated pyramids offer tours and a deep dive into Mayan culture, and pueblos mágicos (Valladolid, Izmal) are also close by and worth exploring. Cenotes, or natural sinkholes in the region’s limestone bedrock, are part of what define the Yucatán Peninsula, where more than 10,000 of these deep blue swimming holes are located. Each cenote is uniquely beautiful, and hundreds are accessible as lushly camouflaged swimming holes.