Carlota Sustainable Design Hotel

A century-old mansion in Quito's UNESCO-protected historic center, brought back to life by the owner's architect wife, who answered all that colonial grandeur with industrial edges and modernist geometry. The boutique hotel keeps the bones and ditches the fussiness, so rooms feel striking rather than museumlike. A bistro and a rooftop bar round things out, the latter offering a geography lesson in Andean city planning you didn't know you needed.