Mexico City, Mexico

El Cortés

Price per night from$479.37

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD479.37), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

El Cortés Photos

Style

La vie en Roma

Setting

Cool, cultured colonia

Explore

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Set in a 1910s mansion in Mexico City’s arty Roma Norte neighborhood, El Cortés is a perfectly composed boutique stay. Understated interiors take the townhouse’s French-accented period architecture as their canvas, with hand-picked art and antiques adding contrast to original stained glass and lofty ceilings. Throw in an elevated Swiss-Mexican restaurant and an address in one of the city’s buzziest colonias and you’ve landed an intimate pied-à-terre that’s something of a masterpiece.

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Facilities

Photos El Cortés facilities

Need to know

Rooms

15, including six suites.

Check–Out

Noon, and check-in is at 3pm. Both are flexible, on request and subject to availability.

More details

Rates include a breakfast of one à la carte dish, pastry and hot drink at Lotti.

Also

Unfortunately, El Cortés is not suitable for guests with limited mobility.

At the hotel

Free WiFi throughout. In rooms: TV, air-conditioning, Marshall Bluetooth speaker, Nespresso coffee machine (charged), tea-making kit, minibar, free bottled water, bathrobes, slippers and Byredo bath products.

Our favourite rooms

Each room has its own charm, with eye-drawing art and period quirks to admire. In the Superior Terrace Room, you can take breakfast out on your balcony. A curved wall with three French windows floods the Panorama Suite with sunlight, and the Signature Suite is a showstopper thanks to its impressive art collection and outsize bathroom.

Spa

There’s no spa, but Smith stablemate La Valise is just across the road. You can book treatments at La Valise’s spa (subject to availability) through the El Cortés concierge.

Packing tips

If you’re a magpie for design souvenirs, bring bubble wrap: El Cortés’ artworks and antiques are the gateway to La Roma’s vintage boutiques and concept stores.

Also

A hidden design detail: the stained-glass panels in the Patio Suites were reworked by Ramón Sierra, who helped restore the Castillo de Chapultepec.

Pet‐friendly

Pets are not allowed at El Cortés. See more pet-friendly hotels in Mexico City.

Children

Over-12s are welcome.

Food and Drink

Photos El Cortés food and drink

Top Table

Take a seat on Lotti’s sun-dappled terrace.

Dress Code

Something sleek will suit Lotti’s airy white palette, whether that’s a crisp white tee, an impeccably cut blazer or a slip dress.

Hotel restaurant

It's an achingly cool — and crowded — culinary scene in Roma, but Lotti has made a name for itself as a warm and buzzy place to be. Chef Luc Liebster’s Swiss heritage and fine-dining experience shine through in dishes built around exceptional Mexican ingredients. Menus shift with the seasons, but you might snack on Swiss alpine bread and Querétaro butter before moving onto braised leg of lamb with polenta, avocado and lemony jalapeño gremolata. Save room for the apple strudel, baked to the recipe of Liebster’s grandmother, Lotti’s namesake.

Breakfast is an equally indulgent affair. Dishes including salmon-trout tartare with avocado and radish put a Mexican spin on a traditional Swiss breakfast, and the French toast with figs and mascarpone has cemented Lotti as a beloved local brunch spot.

Hotel bar

There’s no separate bar, but gather round Lotti’s hammered copper horseshoe bar to peruse the impressive spirit collection to your heart’s content.

Last orders

Breakfast is from 8am to noon. Lotti is open for lunch and dinner from 2pm to 10pm, Wednesday to Sunday. It’s closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but an all-day breakfast menu is available instead frpm 8am to 4pm.

Room service

Breakfast can be delivered to your room daily from 8am to noon. You can order up dishes from Lotti’s main menu from 2pm to 10pm, Wednesday to Sunday.

Location

Photos El Cortés location
Address
El Cortés
Calle Colima 235 Roma Norte Cuauhtémoc
Mexico City
06700
Mexico

You’ll find El Cortés on a leafy street in Mexico City’s Roma Norte neighborhood.

Planes

Mexico City International Airport is between 20 minutes to an hour away by car, depending on the time of day. The hotel can arrange private transfers for US$325 (round trip) with at least 24 hours' notice.

Automobiles

You’ll be better off without your own car around here — Roma Norte and the surrounding colonias can easily be explored on foot, and the concierge can help arrange trips further afield.

Worth getting out of bed for

Roma Norte is a pleasure to stroll around — start by circling the fountains in Rio de Janeiro Park, then branch out along the colonia’s wide, tree-lined avenues in search of street art, galleries and indie boutiques. Save room in your tote for a trip to Mercado Roma, where there are artisanal cheeses to splurge on as you graze your way around the globe-trotting street food stalls. Dried spices and mole powders make excellent souvenirs from Mercado Medellín, a local market bursting with fresh produce and flowers. Casa Museo Guillermo Tovar de Teresa houses an impressive collection of Ibero-American artwork, and El Museo del Objeto del Objeto explores Mexican history through everyday objects. Continue west into neighboring La Condesa, a very pretty pocket of Art Deco architecture.

Local restaurants

Contramar is a stalwart of La Roma’s culinary scene, with its elevated, seasonal Mexican seafood setting the benchmark in the colonia since the Nineties. At Rosetta, chef Elena Reygadas marries her love of Italian flavors with a curiosity about Mexico’s culinary traditions. On the same street, Blanco Colima makes a romantic dinner spot — it’s set in a Porfirian-era mansion, with wedding-cake moulding and stone balconies as your atmospheric backdrop.

Local cafés

The much lauded guava pastries might lure you to bakery and café Panaderia Rosetta, but once you’re there, the crumbly polvorón shortbread, horchata coffee and sourdough focaccia become incredilby tempting, too.

Local bars

Roma Norte is a nexus of the city’s thriving craft cocktail scene. Licorería Limantour is a longtime favorite, with its Mexican twist on the classics drawing cocktail connoisseurs and casual margarita fans alike. At Café Tacobar, top-notch mixology meets street-style tacos.

Reviews

Photos El Cortés reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this aesthete-pleasing hotel in Roma Norte and unpacked their mole and mercado purchases, a full account of their art-filled break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside El Cortés in Mexico City… 

Once upon a time in Roma Norte, fashions were distinctly Francophile — hence the art nouveau mansions that line its leafy calles. A century-odd later, La Roma is a cool, contemporary neighborhood abuzz with cutting-edge galleries, concept stores and acclaimed restaurants. El Cortés, set in one of those grand, French-inspired residences, marries the tastes of both eras. The careful restoration pairs restrained interiors, antiques and art with thoughtful modern frills.  

The hotel’s European-Mexican restaurant is a local haunt — while crunching croquetas here, you feel firmly part of the Roma Norte in-crowd. But the real sense of belonging comes from the quieter moments; curled up with a Kerouac novel under the living room’s 18th-century Aubusson tapestry, or sipping mezcal from a cut-crystal tumbler out on your Juliet balcony as the bougainvillea flutters in the breeze. There’s a deft balancing act at work — this is a boutique stay that spans several eras, steeped in old-world Gallic romance yet rooted in modern-day Mexico City.

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Price per night from $421.21

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