HotelChatter || Guanajuato Hotel Guide: Hotel Castillo Santa Cecilia

Once again, HotelChatter contributing editor Tim Leffel is moving around Mexico, checking out the hotel scene in the colonial heartland. If you have a question about where to stay in Guanajuato or San Miguel de Allende, hit us on the tipline, or just comment below, and we will do our best to get you some sort of answer. Enjoy.

Is that a medieval castle? In the middle of Mexico? Hotel Castillo Santa Cecilia goes into the category of "oddities worth mentioning" rather than "places you might want to stay."

This Guanajuato hotel takes the castle theme and runs with it, inside and out. You've got an imposing stone structure on a hilltop, turrets that would work fine for firing arrows at the men loading the catapults, and furniture inside that's straight out of a King Arthur movie.

But why? Unfortunately the potential guests seem to be asking that question as well, since when we visited during a big holiday week, the hotel was deader than the Dark Ages after a plague.

We wandered the spooky hallways, looked at the suits of knights' armor, and caught the killer view from the ballroom on the top floor. The only thing missing was people. Had they been sent to the dungeon?

Someday a big-pocketed investor could take this hotel over and make it a showplace. For now, service has a reputation as being the worst in town and the Spanish-language reviews on TripAdvisor are as bad as the others, with headlines translating to "Beware this hotel" and "Dreadful hotel."

Stay elsewhere, then take a walk by it to gawk.

Related Stories:
Guanajuato Hotel Guide: Villa Maria Cristina

Hotel Reviews:
Hotel Castillo Santa Cecillia

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