Townhouse is an eleven-room art hotel in the San Diego quarter of Cartagena's walled Old Town, where every room was hand-painted by a young Colombian artist and the building holds two bars — a rooftop cocktail bar and diner with pools and panoramic views, and a jazz-and-burlesque lobby bar. It is a place to stay that is also a place the city comes to.
Founded in 2017 to fill the gap its owners saw between Cartagena's romantic luxury hotels and its backpacker hostels: fancy without being boring, and unapologetically fun. Concretely: eleven rooms, each designed and decorated by a different young Colombian artist; the first hotel in the city to open its rooftop to the public (locals get 15% off, and they come); a members-only jazz bar in a salsa city, programmed for local musicians rather than tourists; a kitchen run by Chef Pedro Mosqueda, who came up through Michelin-starred kitchens in New York; and house cocktails built on locally distilled gin, rum, aguardiente, viche and ñeque. It is the Old Town sibling of Blue Apple Beach on Tierra Bomba, twenty minutes away by boat, and it refuses the eco-hotel label while running a waste-free operation (70%+ diverted from landfill), fair wages above minimum, and local supply chains.
Independent travelers who want a base inside the walled city rather than a resort — friend groups and girls' trips, couples, solo creative types, and returning guests of Blue Apple Beach who want a night in town. People who would rather drink where locals drink than where the guidebook says. Cartageneros and expat residents come for the rooftop at sunset and Members Only on Friday and Saturday nights, which means guests are staying somewhere with a real local crowd in it, not a lobby full of other tourists. Not for anyone seeking hushed colonial romance or an early, silent night — the rooftop runs to midnight and reviewers do mention the noise.
Hot, loud, colorful, and completely at ease with itself. The register is a friend with excellent taste talking fast — funny, a little rude, never precious. Visually this is abundance, not restraint: hand-painted walls, saturated tropical color, artwork stacked as if the lobby really is a gallery, handmade furniture, plants and palm shade. Light should read as Caribbean — hard white glare at midday, everything softening into gold and then into bar light after six. Pace shifts across the day: languid and horizontal by the rooftop pools in the afternoon, then dense, dim, and close for jazz downstairs at night. Texture over polish — paint, tile, timber, water, skin. Sensory cues to lean on: cold martini condensation, fresh-squeezed fruit you can't name, a trumpet two floors down. Nothing white-cube, nothing corporate, nothing that feels like it is trying to be tasteful. Warmth and mischief over elegance.
The hotel's own origin story, told in its founder's words: arriving in Cartagena in 2014 and finding the city split between "romantic luxury hotels (yawn)" and "raving backpacker hostels (nah)," then opening Townhouse in 2017 as somewhere to host friends and anyone who wanted to live Cartagena the way they do. The site signs that quote only @portiaatthebeach — that is Portia Hart, who per press coverage (Travel Noire, Whitewall) is British-Trinidadian and spent close to a decade as a Monaco-based yacht broker before coming to Colombia to learn Spanish and staying. Blue Apple Beach's own account frames Townhouse as demand-led: so many people asked whether they had a place in the Walled City that eventually they made one. Regenerative Travel reports Hart also founded the Green Apple Foundation in 2017, a not-for-profit working on waste and natural resource management in Cartagena hospitality — the site only gestures at this with the @greenapplectg tag. She has spoken publicly about leading a management team that is "entirely young, BIPOC, gay, female, didn't finish high school, or a combination of the above." The art program is the hotel's stated identity, not a decorative afterthought: rooms are named after Colombian birds — "what Colombia should be best known for" — and each was painted by a different young artist; the lobby functions as a gallery; furniture is made in-house; Members Only exists explicitly as a stage for young local musicians, from DJs to jazz groups. The hotel hosts artists in residence in exchange for a creative gift. Its self-description is worth quoting back at it: an art hotel, but "not the stuffy, silent, white walls kind." The neighborhood does real work here. San Diego sits inside the walls, a few minutes from Plaza de San Diego and walkable to Getsemaní, so the hotel treats the whole Old Town as its restaurant list and points guests toward independent, locally owned places run by people it knows. The food position follows the same logic — the rooftop diner serves all day because Cartageneros want something other than ceviche and fritos, and locals eat here for exactly that reason. Chef Pedro Mosqueda, who also cooks for Blue Apple Beach and Amare, is described by the hotel as a stickler for provenance: local, fresh, no ultra-processed food. The Telegraph has called it "a home from home... chic but not stuffy, vibrant yet elegant," with a "palm-fringed rooftop [that] oozes low-key glamour."
The rooftop cocktail bar and diner — open 8am to midnight, panoramic city views, pools big enough for full immersion, the first hotel rooftop in Cartagena opened to the public, 15% off for locals. Members Only, the lobby jazz bar with live music, DJs and burlesque, open 9pm–1am Fridays and Saturdays. The eleven rooms, each named for a Colombian bird and hand-painted by a young Colombian artist. Chef Pedro Mosqueda's all-day menu and the house cocktails built on locally distilled spirits — gin, rum, aguardiente, viche, ñeque. The San Diego / walled Old Town location, and Blue Apple Beach as the sister property twenty minutes away by boat.
| Address | #36-88 Carrera 7, Cartagena de Indias, Bolívar, 130001, CO |
|---|---|
| Neighborhood | San Diego, Walled Old Town |