Casona Roma Norte

Casona Roma Norte calls its mansion Porfirian, which is loyal of it. Porfirio Díaz resigned in 1911 and died in Paris four years later; this house on Durango went up in 1923, to plans by an engineer, M. Hernández Cabrera, and the taste outlived the president. The front is rose pink, with a carved shell over each arched window upstairs and a stone balustrade beneath it, and the trees along the street mean the house is seen through leaves. Since 2024 it has been a hotel of 32 rooms, shared between the old house and a modern extension, whose glass rises over the cornice behind. The lounge has white built-in shelves and a long taupe sofa piped like a rolled mattress. The rooms to want are behind those arches, where brass lamps reach over the bed on swing arms against grey panelling, and an arched door opens onto a balcony with the same balusters as the front.

Recommended for grown-ups who mean to spend their days in Roma and Condesa, since there is no pool to keep them in; children are welcome from twelve, and so are dogs. The walking starts at the door: Parque España is 300 metres off, and Parque México, the Art Deco park at the middle of Condesa, twice that. The Sevilla metro, three blocks away, does the rest of the city. Back at the house there is a gym, and a massage room for the legs. Dinner is Restaurante Aquiles, Aquiles Chávez's all-day dining room off the lobby, or Suchi, which cooks Japanese by way of Sinaloa. Akamba, the bar, calls itself an agave gallery, and is the one gallery in Roma where finishing the exhibits is encouraged.