The top luxury stays in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia

Colombia’s most famous writer, the inimitable Gabriel García Márquez, once said in a press interview that he could never have written his books if he had not been a journalist – because all of his material was extracted from reality. Wandering between the pastel-coloured colonial structures of Cartagena’s labyrinthine cobbled streets, one could be forgiven for thinking that they had indeed stepped into Márquez’s magical realist universe of fantasy and wonder. A city of effortless and timeless charm, exploring the old walled city in the sultry Caribbean heat is a multi-sensory experience: absorb the rhythms of the music here, enjoy the melody of the Caribbean’s heavily accented Spanish and sample the region’s colourful and exotic cuisine.

Luxury hotels in the city’s historic centre tend to be tucked away in exquisitely restored colonial buildings of varying sizes. Offering all the necessary mod-cons with all the opulence of…