Kate Bellm is an accidental hotelier. Just over 10 years ago, the British photographer known for her work with Vogue and Gucci moved to Majorca’s Serra de Tramuntana region, on its northwestern coast. After making a home there, she began to look for a studio space.
Together with her husband, the Mexican artist Edgar Lopez Arellano, she found an imposing mountainside finca near her home. It’s shrouded by ancient palms, pines, olive groves, and jacaranda trees on the winding road connecting Deià and Sóller.
Originally built as a monastery, it had been reconfigured as a manor house and agricultural stronghold in the 16th century before becoming a hotel. Though crammed with heavy mahogany furniture and antiques, lending it what Bellm calls “this really heavy energy,” she was enchanted. “I could immediately see what it could be,” she says.
It marked the beginning of a transformative new chapter for the couple, and for the historic property. Its latest incarnation, as Hotel Corazón—“heart” in Spanish —is a vibrant and authentic expression of their joint tastes and creative energies. While Bellm worked with the architects at Moredesign, based in Deià, to bring the monastic interior to life, Lopez’s exuberant canvases and zero-water cacti gardens add moments of visual interest throughout.
“Every one has its own personality,” she says of the 15 rooms, which are very Frank Lloyd Wright meets The Flintstones. (The place to be is the cavernous El Corazón Suite, which has a generous terra-cotta-tiled terrace complete with a roll-top bath.) There is not a right angle in sight. The curvaceous, lime-washed walls are covered in sorbet shades that run from blush to nectarine, depending on the shifting sun. Even the reception desk, which resembles a large hunk of frosted cake, is a sculptural installation.
“Majorca is such a warm and open place, and that’s the energy we wanted to create here,” says Bellm. Produce from her organic farm is used in the shredded-kale salad and smoothies on head chef Eliza Parchanska’s California-style menu.
Much of the hotel’s wonderfully untamed charm stems from its collaborative spirit. The interior is decorated with colorful ceramics and paintings made by Bellm and Arellano’s close friends. Some of their work is sold in the hotel’s bijoux boutique alongside limited-edition sweaters and tees.
Guests tend to be creative types—filmmakers, musicians, photographers—who take advantage of the sound baths and yoga classes. (Reading by the outdoor pool and descending the hillside in search of hidden, rocky swimming coves are also popular pastimes.)
The latest decorative jewel in the Corazón crown is its Terrace restaurant. It was freshly refurbished by London designer Tatjana von Stein, a longtime friend of Bellm’s who has recently opened a satellite studio on the island. With its comfortable striped booths, marble tabletops, and wrought-iron detailing, it forms a theatrical foreground to the dramatic view of the mountain range beyond.
Open to hotel guests and day-trippers alike, it’s dotted with flowering yucca plants—a symbol of purification that neatly marks the completion of the Corazón’s vibe shift. As its manifesto says: Welcome to the slow life.
The writer was a guest of Hotel Corazón, where room rates begin at $1,020 per night
Aimee Farrell is a Cambridge, U.K.–based writer and consultant specializing in design, interiors, and the decorative arts. She is a contributing editor at the Financial Times’s HTSI
