Photo Illustration: The Strategist; Photos: Five Graces
A humble Santa Fe spot capable of leaving a massive psychological footprint, the Inn of the Five Graces is a great hotel, maybe perfect. A night there is a night spent in an artist’s global tableau. It’s also a recovery capsule and, more simply, a perfect stopover, good for appearing, sleeping and exiting. It has two of the most important characteristics of a truly great hotel: it really could only exist where it is. And on the best nights, it can be worth so much more than a simple night in the shelter.
I ended up at the Inn of the Five Graces at the end of a cross-country road trip in April 2021 – my first trip since the pandemic began – after some spring skiing in Taos was likely cut short by a series of panic attacks long in the works. I had to detach myself. I knew a travel writer who had recently made the same trip and who gave the Five Graces Inn her highest praise. This was more than any other Santa Fe spot your more knowledgeable friends will recommend, like Ten Thousand Waves (“great, worth a stop for dinner and/or a spa day”) or the cozy, chintzy Hipness that the Inn of the is Turquoise Bear. That is, if I could swallow the nightly price, which is usually around $715. I could not. So I did what any half-decent traveler knows how to do in such a situation: call the hotel directly, speak to a human being and beg.
There are plenty of negotiation tactics when it comes to getting a good hotel deal — including leverage to remind the front desk that an empty room makes less money than one with a corpse in it — but there’s no better ace up your sleeve than a complete disregard for one’s own dignity. I gave them my budget, told them I needed this and promised to give a good review.
I got the room. It was still $510. This was, I assure you, an absolute bargain.
Five Graces costs what it costs because it’s a thoroughly moving experience, travel within travel. It is located one small block off Santa Fe Plaza, the beating heart of Santa Fe’s sightseeing action, just steps from the San Miguel Mission, believed to be the oldest church in the United States. A warm lobby, stunning in its quiet, plush comfort, spills into one of the few stone courtyards on the property with antique fountains dripping water where you can have breakfast or enjoy a few cocktails. I entered my room through a heavy antique wooden door that opened onto cool mud walls and beams; The sales service included details that might be cheesy elsewhere (a dream catcher on a folded corner of the bed, or the stereo left on playing soft Spanish guitar music), but felt genuine, almost necessary, here. I found myself lowering my voice to a whisper.
This place is death through a thousand soft kisses and little touches. Fresh tortilla chips and smoky salsa sat atop a free minibar. Alongside one of the room’s main attractions, a wood-burning kiva fireplace, were stacks of piñon, long matches, and pre-rolled kindling paper with detailed instructions for the uninitiated. (Or, “Just give us a call and we’ll light it for you.”) There’s rugs, metal and turquoise, and framed vintage prints of birds with Arabic captions underneath. There’s New Mexico, yes, but there’s also Afghanistan and Tibet. And you might be wondering: Who the hell dreamed up this place?
That would be Ira Seret – former business partner of Anne Klein and protégé of Diana Vreeland – and his wife Sylvia. They were among the first to import Afghan sheepskin coats for fashion houses in the late 1960s and early 1970s and have been honing their artistic project ever since. This won’t be more obvious than when you step into your bathroom, hopefully with a bathtub in it, and you’re greeted with a psychedelic face full of color and texture: die-cut word carvings lining the entire bathroom where there aren’t any mosaics, tiles from anywhere in the world , wherever you look. To call these bathroom tiles is to call Guernica a nice picture or Hamlet an interesting play—technically correct, but something only a madman would say.
One of the inn’s intricately tiled bathrooms with mosaics
Photo: Kate Russell
You never want to leave a great hotel, and when you do, you’ll experience its allure. I didn’t explore much in Santa Fe. I picked up dinner, ate it in the courtyard of the Five Graces, listened to the murmur of the fountain and wrote a few postcards. Back in my room, I dimmed the lights, ran a bath, threw some pinon logs on the fire, and got into the tub. I marveled at the mosaics, contemplating the vastness of this planet and all the things we find in it that we bring back with us and try to fit them into the patterns of our lives, rather than just collecting exotic oddities and tchotchkes from afar a way. I just let this, someone else’s world, envelop me, calm me and banish the weariness I’ve been carrying for the 13 months leading up to that night. A night at a great hotel may set you a few hundred bucks lighter, but it can also leave you more grounded, with more strength in your soul than you showed up. Ideally also: some nice stationery.
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