Inkaterra La Casona

Inkaterra La Casona is one of the most intimate luxury hotels in Cusco, with just 11 suites arranged around the main patio of a 16th-century manor house on the Plaza Las Nazarenas. The site is said to have been a training ground for an elite Inca army, and the house later received notable guests including the conquistador Diego de Almagro and Simón Bolívar, the Liberator. Inkaterra spent five years restoring the building, keeping its original architecture.

In 2010 it became the first Relais & Châteaux hotel in Peru, and Inkaterra describes it as the first five-star boutique hotel in Cusco. It is also recognised as one of National Geographic's Unique Lodges of the World. The scale is the point: with so few suites, the atmosphere is closer to staying in a private house than a hotel.

Each suite has a fireplace, heated floors and an extra-large bathtub, which are welcome on cold Andean nights at around 3,400 metres. The public rooms are furnished with colonial pieces and pre-Columbian textiles, and original murals survive on the walls, so the house feels lived in rather than staged. The Yacu therapy room offers treatments tailored to each guest, and the dining room uses produce from local suppliers.

La Casona suits couples and travellers who value privacy and character over extensive facilities, and for whom a handful of suites around a single patio is more appealing than a large hotel. Sales and reservations can be contacted through the group's published email address.

The location on the Plaza Las Nazarenas is excellent, and the square itself is full of history: the Museo de Arte Precolombino occupies a mansion built over an Inca ceremonial building, and Palacio Nazarenas was once a Jesuit college for aristocratic children. Belmond Hotel Monasterio also stands on the square, and the Plaza de Armas, the Cathedral and the Twelve-Angled Stone, the famous diorite block set in the Inca wall of the Archbishop's Palace, are a few minutes' walk away. The airport is around ten minutes away by car, which makes arrival easy after a flight from Lima, roughly 1,000 kilometres away.