We entered through a fairly humble
gate and knew immediately this hotel was going to be something very different.
A water feature to our right and a very long covered walkway.
Indeed something very
different
All this
and we haven’t made it ‘inside’ yet
The area to the
right of the courtyard was vast
To the
left, the hotel swimming pool just visible in the distance
Santo Domingo Convent, the biggest and richest convent in Antigua and
considered very grand in the Americas, can be traced back to 1538
when the Dominicans arrived
in Guatemala. Founded in 1542, it had two towers with ten bells and was filled
with treasures. Its large church was completed in 1666.
The monastery was destroyed in 1773 and today parts of
the ruins have been transformed into a hotel with public spaces. The Hotel Casa Santo
Domingo, is a five
star hotel and museum which opened in 1989. I checked on line to see what the
rates were to stay in one of the one hundred and twenty nine rooms, randomly
choosing Monday night - the only availability was a Junior Suite or a large
double (price range 185 – 250 for the night).
We bimbled around the public areas of
the hotel and stopped to look at the expensive menu before making our way back
to the first courtyard. Apparently there is a museum
here on the grounds that is the best in Antigua – perhaps next Sunday it would
make an interesting perambulate.
