Review of Hotel Monasterio, by John Borthwick

In Cusco, Peru, the ancient Inca masonry is so supple you'd swear the stones were woven. The ten, twelve, fifteen-sided blocks fit like plasticine, without mortar, to form massive ramparts that have endured the whims of time - centuries of earthquake, invasion and revolution. On such foundations the Spanish Conquistadors, who arrived in 1533, built their own cathedrals and palaces. The resulting architecture is a tale of two histories - Inca from the knees down, so to speak, and Spanish above.

The Seminary of San Antonio Abad was founded in 1595 on the site of an Inca palace. Today it is the five-star Hotel Monasterio, under the management of Orient-Express-Hotels and listed on the Peruvian National Heritage register. Step across its threshold (beneath the royal escutcheon of Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain) and you brush against a time when these colonnades shaded both piety and intrigue.

As you wander below beams marzipanned by centuries of whitewash, your progress is interrogated by the Spanish friars and remittance men whose varnished portraits look down from the walls.

Undaunted, indeed, relaxed by a quick, strictly medicinal snort on the oxygen cylinder in the hotel lobby and a belt of coca tea from the adjacent urn - the altitude, y'know - you proceed through garden courtyards and flag-stoned corridors towards the Monasterio's piece de resistance, its Baroque chapel. Not so much a private chapel as a pocket basilica, its altar is an orgy of gold lit by pale candles.

More portraits by the brilliant, anonymous Indian painters of the Cusquena School look down in the chapel. In a major work (as one author put it), "celestial hosts gaze down on lurid infernos…a demon even dares to appear before Christ, whispering sulphurous advice into the ear of a Jesuit who is advocating the closure of this very seminary."

An air-conditioned room and cable television, plus good cebiche and crème caramel in the restaurant (once the refectory) remind you that you haven't died and gone to the 17th century but remain alive in a 123-room hotel. Still, somewhere beneath your feet is a subterranean passage that obligingly ran from this all male seminary to the next door convent of Nazarene nuns.

You can take coffee beneath a 300-year old cedar in the inner quadrangle that has witnessed the building's serial incarnations - as a seminary, a Royal Pontifical University and from 1965, as an hotel.

Taking a breather from all this cloistered ambience you step out into Cusco and its nearby centre, Plaza de Armas. The pimply seminarians and horny friars of San Antonio are long gone, but Cusco is still a university town. Its cobble-stoned streets are awash with students and backpackers. Internet cafes, pizzerias and music clubs are tucked behind colonial portals that were already old when Captain Cook was still finding his sea legs. Drop into the lively Los Perros restaurant (in Tecsecocha Street) run by charming young Melbourne ex-pat Tammy Gordon.

By night the Plaza de Armas, flanked by World Heritage cathedrals and dished in an Andean valley of lights and stars, is almost otherworldly. On the rim of the valley above it, an illuminated white statue of Christ is caught like a brilliant bird in flight. All of which seems rich stuff until you step out even further. The soft geometry of that Incaic "pillow masonry" (as it is known) become even more impressive at the giant fortresses of Sacsayhuaman and, further away, at Ollantaytambo.

The best is yet to come. Leaving Cusco on an early morning train you travel the narrow cleavage of the Urabamba River valley. Your destination is, of course, Machu Picchu. Its stones remain in almost perfect condition, some 500 years after they were abandoned. The Incas often built with a sense of drama. In the case of Machu Picchu, high on its Andean spine, they made a city that resembles an altar of stone amid a temple of mountains, or as poet Pablo Neruda saw it, "a city raised like a chalice".

Back at the Monasterio, an Inca harpist in the lobby maintains the transcendent theme. A few steps away is that chapel which makes this perhaps the only hotel in the world where you might seek in-house forgiveness for - should it ever officially become one - the sin of wanderlust.

CHECKING IN: The ambience is casual sans grunge, perhaps indicated by a fair amount of designer khaki clothing among the guests. The latter are principally North Americans and Europeans, some on soft adventure packages that may have included an Amazon cruise and almost certainly Machu Picchu.

Stepping out: Cusco Cathedral and La Compania church. Machu Picchu, of course; also Pisac markets.

Brickbats: Some rooms are monastically small. Altitude headaches are likely for first day or so in Cusco at 3325 m.

Bouquets: Historic central location. Tranquility. The hotel makes significant donations to the Archbishop of Cusco's fund for orphans and abandoned old people.