Rich History
By chance, we found this beautiful Hotel Marianao in Nautla. Before checking out in the morning, I started to talk to the manager Don Fabio who showed me around, let me climb onto the roof and told me the history of this hotel.
He inherited the house from his parents who were of French descent.
In the course of the nineteenth century, a small French colony was founded in Nautla and commerce started between Veracruz and France.
Roof tiles were used as weights to balance the ships and later on sold as construction material. There some colonial buildings still have French-style roofs with tiles in Nautla.
Modern plaster was not yet available, so they used sand from the beach mixed with crushed shells – you can see small parts of the shells if you look carefully at the picture.
Instead of amored concrete, railway tracks were to support the roof structure. Old tracks were on sale around hundred years ago when the gauge was changed and new railway lines were build with a wider gauge.
A lot of history in a small village – if you come to Nautla, don’t miss to stay in Hotel Marianao.
