Casas Del XVI

First things first, to facilitate the conversation with your taxi driver: XVI means “sixteen,” as you’d guess, and is pronounced “dieciséis,” as you might remember from the first week of Spanish. The number is key to the concept behind the Hotel Casas del XVI, a chic colonial-style hotel located in the historic center of Santo Domingo. Sixteen isn’t the address, or the number of rooms: it’s the century that the hotel evokes and celebrates — the birth of what’s now considered the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas.

The idea here is to recreate the experience of Spanish nobility who came to the New World in the city’s early days. So it’s old-fashioned glamour to the hilt, plus the modern amenities you wouldn’t dream of doing without. The casas in question are a pair of elegant neighboring villas, gloriously restored and refashioned into a seven-suite hotel. Casa del Arbol has a cozy library, a sleek kitchen and bar, and an outdoor dining area. Casa de los Mapas, meanwhile, faces out onto a charming central courtyard that's straight out of your vacation fantasies: towering palm trees, a swimming pool that glows turquoise at night, candlelit daybeds where one of the hotel’s dedicated butlers will be more than pleased to serve you a mojito, or a Mamajuana if you’re feeling adventurous.

You can guess at what you’ll find in these guest rooms. Four-poster beds, arching doorways, gorgeously tiled floors: check, check, and check, plus iPhone docks, flat-screen TVs, and bath products by Antica Farmacista. What you might not guess is just how many adorably quirky details you’ll discover at Hotel Casas del XVI. Hotels this high-end often trade off character for bland but tasteful luxury that’s meant to appeal to every possible guest. But Casas del XVI has, in addition to its traditional architecture and colonial antiques, purple walls, modern art, floating bathtubs, light fixtures shaped like pineapples, indigenous crafts, a collection of old maps. It’s a hotel with a big personality, rich with colorful details — and it’s worth mentioning that it’s extremely LGBT-friendly, something that’s by no means a given in this part of the world. The idea is to relax and recharge, much as the fresh-off-the-boat Spanish elite would have done in the 16th century. But don’t be surprised if the place makes you feel more stimulated than you'd planned — more likely to break out your sketchbook than roll over and take a nap.