Among the grand Beaux-Arts mansions that line Buenos Aires' Retiro district — a neighbourhood whose early twentieth-century ambition was to out-Europe Europe — few buildings carry the weight of civic memory that anchors Casa Lucia. The property is housed in a limestone palazzo whose rusticated pilasters, dentil cornices, and heavily ornamented entrance gate speak directly to the wave of French academicism that swept the Argentine capital between 1900 and 1930, when the country's landowners were among the wealthiest on earth. The conversion into a Meliá Collection hotel brought that heritage into conversation with a thoroughly contemporary interior sensibility: the covered central atrium, glazed over with a steel-and-glass roof, transforms what was once an interior courtyard into the hotel's social heart, its black-and-white marble chequerboard floor and tall bar framed by original limestone pilasters that were left entirely untouched. The guest rooms resolve the tension between the building's ornate shell and a quieter contemporary register through warm oak-slatted headboards, marble-topped commodes, and black-framed steel mirror wardrobes — details that feel more Milan than mid-century pastiche. The restaurant extends the palette into green velvet banquettes and honey-toned timber shelving, polo prints and mallets mounted on the wall as a gentle nod to Argentine estancia culture. Throughout, the approach favours understatement over spectacle, letting the building's original stone detailing carry the formal weight while the furnishings deliver ease.

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