Casa Encantada ★★

The Best Room in the House Is on the Roof

Most colonial houses in Antigua keep their best space at ground level, around the patio. Casa Encantada went up instead. The roof terrace is where breakfast is served and where the evening drinks happen, and the reason is in front of you: a run of tiled colonial roofs and, behind them, Agua, usually with cloud on its shoulder. The house is a corner building on 9a Calle Poniente, four blocks south of the Parque Central, on a residential avenue rather than a tourist one. Nine rooms and a rooftop suite, each decorated individually, with a small pool in the courtyard below.

Why It Works

The trade this house offers is a good one: you give up being in the middle of everything and you get quiet, a pool, a roof and a view. Four blocks in Antigua is nothing, and the walk back in the evening is part of the pleasure. The rooms are individual rather than matched, the service is the personal kind a house of ten keys can actually deliver, and the address has been judged before, having taken the country's leading boutique hotel award. Porta Hotels runs it, which shows in the consistency.

Why This Location

9a Calle Poniente sits at the southern edge of the colonial grid, where Antigua turns residential and the streets empty after dark. The Parque Central, the cathedral ruins and the market are a walk of a few minutes north, the restaurants of 5a Avenida the same. What you gain by being here rather than on the main axis is silence at night and a view that is not blocked by the next roofline. Cerro de la Cruz and the road to the coffee fincas are on the other side of town, and the airport is around an hour away.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxe

• Vibe: Colonial, quiet, residential, rooftop

• Rooms: Nine individually decorated rooms plus a rooftop suite, in a corner house at the southern edge of the grid

• Best For: Couples, travellers on a second visit to Antigua, small groups taking the house whole

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: Breakfast on the roof terrace with Agua in front of you, before the streets fill

• Dining: Restaurant on site, with breakfast and sunset cocktails served on the rooftop terrace

• Amenities: Rooftop terrace, outdoor pool in the courtyard, individually decorated rooms, airport shuttle, whole-house bookings through Porta Hotels

• Attractions: Parque Central and the cathedral ruins four blocks north, the Santa Catalina arch, the Antigua market, Cerro de la Cruz, and the coffee fincas above town

Nine Rooms and a Suite Above Them

The rooms are decorated one by one rather than to a scheme, which in a house of this size is the point: you stay in a room, not in a category. The rooftop suite is the one to ask for, and it is worth asking early. Below, the courtyard holds a small outdoor pool, rarer in Antigua than you would expect and useful in the middle of a warm afternoon. The house can also be taken whole, which suits a family or a group travelling together.

Breakfast, Cocktails and the Volcano Hour

Breakfast is laid on the terrace, and it is the best hour of the day up there, before the town wakes and while the light is still low on the volcano. In the evening the same space does cocktails, and the restaurant downstairs handles dinner for anyone who would rather not walk. Antigua's better tables are a few minutes away in any case, and the staff will point you at the right one rather than keeping you in.

What Porta Brings to a Small House

A house of ten keys usually means charm with gaps in it. Porta Hotels, which runs Casa Encantada, is the reason there are fewer gaps here: transfers that arrive, a restaurant that holds a standard, a booking system that works, and the option of taking the whole house through their Homes programme. What the group has not done is flatten the place into a chain product, and that balance is the thing worth paying for.