History of Parc Royal Hotel in Cuenca

Cuenca was founded in 1557 on a grid of straight streets laid out around the Plaza de Armas, today Calderón Park. That layout has been preserved almost intact and is one of the reasons UNESCO declared the historic center a World Cultural Heritage Site in 1999. Parc Royal is part of it, 200 meters from the old square.
It is said that Simón Bolívar granted properties in Cuenca to General Ignacio Torres Tenorio.

Tradition places the home of General Ignacio Torres Tenorio at this corner. Born in Popayán in 1776, he fought for independence starting in 1809 and served as an aide-de-camp to Simón Bolívar—the Liberator who led the independence movements of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. After the Battle of Pichincha in 1822, Bolívar appointed him governor of Cuenca and, as the story goes, granted him properties in the city, including this plot of land. Today, the corner joins two streets whose names come from that history: Gran Colombia, which recalls the republic founded by Bolívar, and Luis Cordero, which honors the 19th-century poet and president of Ecuador.

Torres remained in Cuenca. Here, he raised his family, introduced the city's first printing press, and represented Azuay, the province of Cuenca, as both a deputy and a senator.
He died in 1840, and a plaque on the adjacent façade—facing Luis Cordero Street—commemorates the centenary of his death.

His descendants held onto the property for over a century. In the 1920s, his granddaughter Mariana Malo y Torres and her husband, José María Montesinos Idrovo, built the structure that stands there today.

Montesinos owned a hardware store and maintained correspondence with Europe. Through this channel, he obtained a French magazine featuring the façade he decided to replicate. He personally guided the local Cuenca craftsmen, sketching each stage of the construction in charcoal. The result combines two traditions: a building with a central courtyard—typical of the Cuenca homes of that era—and a French-inspired façade.

Cuenca was then enjoying an economic boom thanks to the export of toquilla straw hats, the same ones the world knows as Panama hats. Decades earlier, cascarilla—the bark from which quinine was obtained—had opened the city’s first trade routes to Europe. The families who prospered brought materials, ideas, and ways of building back from Europe, and the Parc Royal building is part of that story.

The Craft of Detail

Guillermo Vázquez Astudillo began as a goldsmith’s apprentice at the age of 14. In 1943, he opened his first jewelry store alongside his siblings Polivio and Marujita—just a few meters from this corner—and over the years, the business expanded to eight cities across the country.

In 1969, he purchased the old Hotel Patria; its rooms were later converted into offices and apartments. In the 1970s, he spearheaded the development of Hotel El Dorado, marking the beginning of modern hospitality in Cuenca.

In 2013, Rocío undertook an initial renovation: she installed a panoramic elevator next to the central courtyard and created Suites Gran Colombia, a lodging concept designed for extended stays. The concept was warm, yet the space called for something different. The family consolidated the property, and—nearly a century after the days of Hotel Patria—the building once again became a hotel. Thus, Parc Royal was born.

From Suites Gran Colombia to Parc Royal

The inspiration stems from toile de Jouy, an 18th-century French decorative tradition featuring pastoral scenes and landscapes in a single color. This gave rise to the blue-and-white palette that runs throughout the hotel.

In the lobby and the first-floor entrance, frescoes by artist Fausto Merchán engage in a dialogue with the light from the central courtyard and the history held within these walls.