Erected in 1595 as the Seminary of San Antonio Abad, the building at the heart of Cusco's Centro Histórico survived conquest, earthquakes, and the full arc of colonial Peru before Belmond transformed it into Monasterio, a 126-room hotel whose essential character was always going to be determined by what its architects chose not to touch. The decision proved correct. The arcaded cloister, built from pale Andean limestone in the Spanish Renaissance manner, remains the spatial anchor — a formally planted garden at its centre, terracotta-tiled rooflines stepping around it, a single old tree rising above the parterres of clipped box and seasonal flowers exactly as it might have done for the seminary's original occupants. Inside, the interiors layer Cusco School paintings, carved colonial woodwork, and dark cedar four-poster beds against whitewashed plaster walls and terracotta-tiled floors, the weight of ecclesiastical history carried lightly enough that the rooms feel inhabited rather than museological. The vaulted bar — its stone ceiling unchanged from its convent origins — is furnished with red high-backed chairs and elaborate carved timber joinery, candlelight playing across herringbone brick floors and gilded frames. The restaurant runs along the cloister arcade, draped in white linen curtains that soften the cut-stone columns without concealing them. What the conversion understood, and what makes the property still worth the pilgrimage, is that the architecture already contained everything the design needed.

Monasterio and Palacio Nazarenas are adjacent to one another

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