This article is part of our Design special section on retrofits.
Nearly five centuries of Colombian history leave their mark on the buildings making up the Four Seasons Hotel that opened in Cartagena last month. Among them are a Spanish Colonial monastery built in 1562, a former 1920s social club in a palatial French style and a cluster of five movie theaters that had their heyday before television took over — all connected to a newly constructed wing that holds guest rooms.
Massive by any standard, the resort covers more than eight urban acres in this Caribbean tourist destination. Located in the Getsemani neighborhood, it is a five-minute walk to Torre del Reloj, the clock tower that serves as the main gate of Cartagena’s famous walled city.
The hotel took 18 years to complete, according to its developer, Alejandro Santo Domingo, a New Yorker with Colombian roots. His company, Valorem, also owns Colombia’s largest cinema chain, hundreds of discount grocery stores, a major newspaper and a television network.
Those enterprises, and others, have made the Santo Domingo family billionaires. Creating the hotel — and preserving important heritage sites that had been badly neglected — was a way of giving back, he said. “This is a for-profit thing, but it’s in our philanthropy bucket as a family,” Santo Domingo added. “It was a gift to Colombia and we hope everyone sees it that way because, from an investment standpoint, we wouldn’t be able to justify it.”
The Four Seasons project did not start out so big. The company began in 2008 by acquiring the movie theaters, which had been abandoned for decades. The film “Top Gun,” which came out in 1986, was still on the marquee when construction began, said Laura Acevedo, who managed the project for San Francisco Investments, a Valorem subsidiary. Santo Domingo described the buildings, with crumbling walls and caved roofs, as a war zone. “Vultures were living inside them,” he said.
But the landmark Club Cartagena was sitting empty right next door, and it made sense to buy that as well. Designed in 1925 by the French architect Gastón Lelarge, the building facade was decked out with Beaux-Art details, including columns, balustrades and a fancy cornice.
The club, which is on Colombia’s historical register, was a high-society attraction for decades, hosting debutante balls and weddings, but it, too, was abandoned. The roof had disappeared, leaving it open to topical storms. Trees were growing inside.
The developers went on to acquire the adjacent 16th-century San Francisco Cloister and Temple, taking a 99-year lease from its owner, a local university that was using it for classrooms. The building was known for its square courtyard with a towering banyan tree in each of its four corners.
And they scooped up a handful of smaller structures, a combination of residential and commercial spaces. These were largely boarded up, Santo Domingo said, with the exception of a resilient salsa club called Casa Quiebra-Canto, which was on the second floor of one of the buildings and reached by a set of notoriously creaky steps.
With the properties in hand, the developer brought in WATG, the New York architecture firm, to come up with a site plan. Monica Cuervo, who was born in Colombia, led the WATG team. The architects decided the club’s atrium, with its elegant central staircase, would become the main hotel lobby. The old Teatro Colón movie theater lent itself to a new life as a ballroom. Guests could sleep in the old monks’ rooms and also in a wing constructed in the yard where they once grew their food. A pool deck, with views of the sunset, could go on top of that.
The concept was handed off to José María Rodríguez, an architect in Bogotá, whose job was to oversee all the restoration and to design new spaces, making everything look cohesive. The strategy was to “tropicalize” the property, as he put it, so that it had the aura of a Caribbean resort. Starting in 2008, his firm executed more than 3,000 drawings showing gardens and pathways with lush, native plants connecting the structures.
“It was this big challenge because there are a lot of different historical buildings, very powerful and very important, all of them,” he said in his office. “You have a French castle, and then suddenly you have a colonial courtyard.”
Because the existing buildings had historic designations, the renovations needed to go through various levels of permits. Under the watchful eye of preservationists, old facades were faithfully reconstructed with contemporary materials that were better able to withstand corrosive salty air. Modern necessities, such as air-conditioning ducts, were added discreetly, so they did not detract from the original design.
The club’s fallen roof was replaced with one made of glass — a detail the original architect had planned but never realized because of budget constraints. A 37,000-square-foot basement housing mechanical equipment was sunk below sea level, a feat accomplished using new technology to hold back groundwater and avoid flooding.
For the guest rooms, restaurants and other public spaces, the developer hired François Catroux, a Parisian designer who was known for decorating upscale residences across the globe. An old friend of the Santo Domingo family, Catroux died in 2020 at 83, soon after designing the hotel’s custom furniture and choosing its fabrics and finishes. The job was completed by his longtime associate, François Bompard.
Catroux’s tastes here leaned toward the simple and symmetrical, with a color palette of beiges, browns and creamy whites. Upholstered headboards, chandeliers and decorative mirrors in wooden frames communicate luxury. Many of the furnishings were made by local craftspeople, in consultation with Poli Mallarino, a Colombian designer who died in 2024.
The hotel has 121 guest rooms and suites, ballrooms, meeting spaces, a spa, a fitness center and eight distinct dining areas, ranging in formality from a pizzeria to the Grand Grill, an old-school steakhouse where flambéed desserts are prepared table side.
It is an opulent transition for a part of Cartagena that had largely gone dark, and it was hardly smooth sailing. Frescoes were discovered under walls and had to be refurbished. Workers found numerous bodies of monks and dignitaries who had been buried on site until the mid-19th century, and remains had to be cleared by archaeologists.
The project is not quite done. Construction is underway for an addition that will include 10 guest rooms and 15 private residences, set to be completed by December.
In a nod to more recent history, the developers are also holding a spot for Casa Quiebra-Canto, which is set to return to its former building later this year.
“Actually, we talked to the owner and said, ‘We will have a place for you, but it’s going to be on the ground floor,’” Santo Domingo said.
