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There are historic hotels, and then there are places where the history goes back so far that the hotel almost feels incidental.
On Calle Las Damas in Santo Domingo’s Colonial Zone, you can stay inside a group of houses whose story begins in the opening years of the 16th century. The walls are stone. Heavy wooden beams cross the ceilings. Brick arches frame passageways and courtyards. Outside, you’re on the street laid out during the government of Nicolás de Ovando, widely described as the first paved street in the Americas.
This is Hodelpa Nicolás de Ovando, and it may be one of the most extraordinary places to sleep in the Caribbean if history is part of the reason you travel.
The hotel occupies three connected historic houses in Santo Domingo’s Ciudad Colonial, including the residence historically associated with Nicolás de Ovando, the Spanish governor who arrived on Hispaniola in 1502. More than five centuries later, the buildings are still here, now housing a five-star hotel with an outdoor pool, a Dominican restaurant, a bar and rooms built into the fabric of the old city.
It isn’t a recreation of colonial Santo Domingo. You’re actually staying inside it.
A Hotel With More Than 500 Years of History
Santo Domingo’s history is difficult to comprehend by Caribbean standards. This was the first permanent European city in the Americas, and the Ciudad Colonial became the starting place for institutions, architecture and urban planning later replicated across the Spanish Americas.
UNESCO inscribed the Colonial City of Santo Domingo as a World Heritage Site in 1990. Its importance goes far beyond the survival of old buildings. After Nicolás de Ovando relocated Santo Domingo to the western bank of the Ozama River following the devastating hurricane of 1502, the city was laid out around streets, squares and permanent stone buildings. UNESCO describes the resulting plan as the “Ovando model,” an urban design that influenced cities across the Americas.
The house now occupied by Hodelpa Nicolás de Ovando belonged to the world being created during those years.
Ovando governed the Indies from Hispaniola between 1502 and 1509, and his administration played a major role in the development of the colonial system. His legacy also includes the violent treatment and exploitation of Hispaniola’s Indigenous Taíno population, an inseparable part of the history of Spanish colonization on the island.
Staying here places you unusually close to the complicated origins of the modern Americas.
You aren’t looking at those years through a display case.
You’re sleeping between their walls.
You’re Staying on Calle Las Damas
The location is a huge part of the experience.
Calle Las Damas runs through the heart of the Ciudad Colonial and is regarded by Dominican tourism authorities as the first paved street in the Americas. It was laid out during Ovando’s government and later took its name from the women of the viceregal court who walked along it.
Today, walking out of the hotel puts you immediately into one of the Caribbean’s greatest concentrations of early colonial architecture.
The Fortaleza Ozama, begun in the early 1500s, is nearby. So is the Museo de las Casas Reales, housed in buildings once connected to the Spanish colonial government. Follow Calle Las Damas north and you reach Plaza de España and the Alcázar de Colón, the palace built for Diego Colón, Christopher Columbus’ son.
Go in another direction and you’re soon at Parque Colón and the Catedral Primada de América.
It gives Santo Domingo something few Caribbean capitals can duplicate: a genuine walking trip through the opening chapters of European colonial history in the Americas, mixed into an active neighborhood of cafés, restaurants, museums and bars.
And Hodelpa Nicolás de Ovando gives you the rare ability to sleep right in the middle of it.
The Old House Is the Experience
Historic hotels sometimes retain a façade and little else. Here, the architecture remains one of the strongest reasons to stay.
There are thick stone walls, brick arches, centuries-old wooden beams and interior courtyards. Passageways lead from one part of the property to another. Rooms have the irregularity and character that come from inhabiting buildings created long before anyone contemplated turning them into a hotel.
The property says the three houses retain original elements from more than 500 years ago.
The result is a hotel you tend to explore.
You wander through an arch and find another courtyard. You follow a corridor and emerge beside the pool. You start paying attention to ceilings, doorways and masonry. Santo Domingo’s history isn’t reserved for the trip you take after leaving the lobby; it follows you back to your room.
That’s exactly what a great historic hotel should do.
There’s Still a Proper Caribbean Hotel Here
The age of the buildings doesn’t mean you’re signing up for a museum stay.
There’s an outdoor swimming pool surrounded by the old architecture, perhaps the hotel’s most appealing contrast: a very Caribbean place to spend an afternoon inside a property whose story began around 1502.
Restaurant 1502 serves Dominican cuisine, while Taberna El Mojito provides the hotel’s bar. There’s also a gym, massage service and room service.
The accommodations range across the historic complex, but the Imperial Colonial Room is the one I’d look at first for a history-centered trip. It comes with Imperial Club privileges, including entry to a private lounge and guided museum tours in the Colonial City.
The latter is a particularly smart addition here. A stay makes considerably more sense when you understand the streets and buildings around you.
This isn’t the kind of hotel where you should spend the entire trip beside the pool.
The hotel is your doorway into Santo Domingo.
Why Santo Domingo Is Different
The Dominican Republic is most famous as a beach destination, and understandably so. Punta Cana, Cap Cana, La Romana, Puerto Plata and Samaná have helped make the country the Caribbean’s tourism giant.
Santo Domingo offers another Dominican Republic entirely.
The capital is one of the region’s great urban destinations, with a restaurant scene, museums, music, nightlife and an architectural heritage unlike anywhere else in the Caribbean. The Ciudad Colonial is compact enough to explore on foot, and many of its most important sites are concentrated within a few blocks.
Staying at Hodelpa Nicolás de Ovando changes the relationship with the neighborhood.
You don’t arrive in the Colonial City for a few hours and leave.
You wake up there. You step outside onto Calle Las Damas. You walk past buildings that have been standing for centuries. Later, after the museums empty and day visitors depart, you still have the old city around you.
A city this historic deserves more than an afternoon.
A Different Kind of Caribbean Trip
There are Caribbean hotels where the main question is how close your room is to the sand.
Here, you start wondering exactly how old the wall beside your bed might be.
That’s the appeal of Hodelpa Nicolás de Ovando. The swimming pool, restaurant and five-star comforts are important, but they’re supporting characters. The reason to come is the chance to inhabit a piece of Santo Domingo’s history.
More than 500 years have passed since Ovando arrived on Hispaniola and helped rebuild Santo Domingo on this side of the Ozama. The city he helped lay out became a template that extended far beyond the Dominican Republic.
Calle Las Damas remains. The old houses remain. The arches and courtyards remain.
And today, remarkably, you can check in.
The best part? The price. I found rates for as low as $123 per nigh right now on my search through Google Hotels.
The post This Caribbean Hotel Is Set Inside a 500-Year-Old Building in the Dominican Republic appeared first on Caribbean Journal.
