For all my friends who love to paint, I found an airbnb for you! It’s in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and we stayed in it in January 2019. It’s like a castle! It’s a castle with a circular staircase in a turret! (Scroll down, you’ll see.) And, fabulous painted walls.
Let’s get right to the walls. This mural with metallic gold design is in the dining room:
In the morning, the sun streams in and the gold glows.
If you have stenciled or painted precise decorative wall treatments, you can appreciate the math & measurements that went into spacing those grids and circles so perfectly.
The tiles + the gold paint design on the fireplace almost vibrate with energy.
Here we are on our last morning enjoying breakfast in the dining room. Can you see how the plates even pick up on the blue tile in the fireplace:
Okay, let’s move on to the next mural in the house. Imagine walking through a steel door into The Mayan, and you’re in a courtyard. Look up, and there’s a huge mural on the wall. This mural is visible upstairs from big windows in the bedroom and the bathroom. Here we’re looking through the bedroom windows:
The mural goes up, up, up beyond this. Here’s the full flowering agave:
Here I tilted the phone down so you can see the entryway courtyard below:
Here’s looking up from the courtyard below. See how the mural is topped off with sky, and when the sky is deep blue, it’s like the mural merges with the sky above:
Now, here’s the mural of women, the namesake for this Airbnb which is called The Mayan. Believe it or not, when you step out of the shower, this is what you see!
Let’s get a closer look.
The finish is “grungy.”
Now turn around, and here’s the bathroom and shower area:
You can see the arch frames the bathroom view. All walls and the ceiling are hand-painted. Even on the doors, there is metallic red paint that pulls color from the floor tiles, and also from red colors in the bedroom that you see when you look through those doors. Here’s that view from the bathroom doors:
Those square red and gold shapes are not tiles. They are all hand painted! Let’s look closer.
As you can see, the wall is also engraved with a grid to simulate tiles.
The previous owner, who was an artist, put a lot of time, care and love into this place. This is not a small wall. All of this had to be mapped out in advance.
Here’s a glimpse of the circular staircase that leads to the second floor bedroom and then up to a rooftop terrace. You can see the theme of arch shapes in the house:
Okay, so let’s head back downstairs. I’ll show you the wall in the living room area. It’s not as decorative. It’s more metallic mottled brown. It’s an understated backdrop to a huge room. Here’s the view of the living room from the kitchen:
Another arch there! It’s all hand painted design around it in metallics.
This next photo gives you an idea of how the painted design wraps around the arch area.
More from the living room:
This post is getting long. But everywhere you turn in this place, there is an interesting scene. Next I’ll show you the kitchen ceiling. You want to see this! And then I’ll show you decorative details around the house.
The kitchen ceiling:
Yeah that’s the kitchen ceiling!
There’s a lot of cool lighting, ironwork, niches and other decorations. Entrance to the circular staircase/turret. Even the “stone” is handpainted detail. As you’ll see in photos below, there’s a lot of interesting things even within the staircase.
Tiny lit up niches in the wall light up the stair treads. And over these, there are metal pieces with shapes like butterflies.
This is at the top of the staircase turret:
I loved things like the hand at the end of the staircase railing. And, the dog paw print in some tiles!
If you’re visiting San Miguel de Allende, check out The Mayan Airbnb. It has one bedroom, so it’s good for one couple, but it’s huge! And, there is another Airbnb on the same property just a few steps away. So two couples could rent both. Chandra, the owner and host, is delightful!
Location: It’s tucked off Orizaba road in the San Antonio neighborhood, southwest of Centro. It’s a pleasant 10-minute walk to the more heavily touristed areas.
Link: Airbnb Listing for The Mayan.