I let the warm Cusco sun slowly melt the ice in my pisco cocktail while I sat back and soaked in my surroundings at the JW Marriott El Convento Cusco’s historic courtyard café. The space once belonged to a 16th-century convent where an order of Augustinian monks freely roamed and made their home within the surrounding rooms. The convent sat abandoned for centuries, decaying amid a wave of travelers passing by the ruins on their way to Machu Picchu, until 2006 when the hotel began to delicately transform the convent into a modern refuge.

Visions of Peruvian monks promenaded through my head as I glanced around at the ancient columns and historic façade, imagining what it must have been like so many centuries ago. The hotel managed to give a voice to the space by preserving so much of the original site, and with the warm sun setting its glow on the courtyard, I began to feel like I was part of the hotel’s new history.

Rather than dwelling on the past, the El Convento Cusco offers guests a chance to dwell in the past, thus joining the ranks of numerous historic properties around the world converted into hotels in recent years.