Home | Casa Colonial Oaxaca | A unique bed and breakfast

The Casa Colonial is more than just a place to stay.

Step through our purple door and you'll know what we mean.

Book a stay in one of our 18 unique rooms, and you can socialize over a cooked-to-order breakfast or at one of the several shaded tables surrounding the lush tropical garden. Take a break in the sala (living room) and peruse the extensive collection of English books and Mexican folk art. After a day of touring, our oasis welcomes you.

The Casa prides itself on being eco-friendly. Unlike most businesses in Oaxaca, we collect rain water, thus conserving the scarce city water, and we heat it with solar collectors. Our bath products are locally made. We buy fresh, local ingredients daily for our meals and compost our organic waste on premises. All of our laundry is line-dried.

From family home to guest house

“The Casa” was built in the 1880s as a family home by Charles Hamilton, a mining engineer. Eighty years later, his grandson, Jaime Hamilton, leased it to Herbert and Mildred Madsen, who had retired from their farm in California and moved to Oaxaca in the 1960s. The large house and extensive garden were in disrepair, and the Madsens renovated them, adding rooms for their dream of a guest house. Their daughter, Mary Madsen Hallock, led cultural tours to Oaxaca from California, and after her parents passed away, she eventually bought the property in 1985.

Mary’s second cousin Jane Saxe Robison and her husband Thornton came knocking during a visit to Oaxaca and fell in love with the place. Mary taught them how to lead tours, and they later bought the house from Mary in 1987, keeping the guest house staff. Thorny was killed in a car accident in 2008, and Jane has run it ever since, with the expert assistance of Amado Bolaños, her manager for over 20 years. For over 100 years, only two families have owned the house, and the ambience has a certain patina of those who have lived there.

The Casa Family

The staff is what makes the Casa the Casa. They shop for and cook our delicious meals, do the laundry and clean our rooms daily, and create the friendly atmosphere for which the Casa is known. We support them and their families with an education fund that guests contribute to. Returning guests are happy to see the same cheerful house workers year after year. A portion of the daily room rate goes to our workers, and we provide health insurance and retirement benefits. We are a team.