Villa del Totoral, Córdoba
Estancia La Loma
A sixteenth-century estancia on the old royal road, with a six-hectare park and twenty more that keep the village at a distance.
The land was crossed in 1573 by Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera, on his way to founding Córdoba. His son Pedro bought it and made it the Estancia de San Esteban del Totoral, a stage on the Camino Real to Upper Peru. The Allende family held the part that became La Loma from 1771 until 1946.
That year it passed to Roberto Noble, the journalist and politician who founded the newspaper Clarín. He ran it as a model agricultural estate and brought the telephone and electric light to Villa del Totoral. He died in 1969, and his daughter Guadalupe kept the place as he had left it.
What that leaves is a house where no two rooms are alike. Each has a wood fire and a full bathroom; some are en suite, with the deep baths the old houses were built around. The pool sits on a water system more than a century old, and the twenty hectares outside the garden do the quiet work of keeping the village out of earshot.
At the table
Breakfast keeps no set hour: coffee, tea, milk, fresh orange juice, homemade bread and preserves, fruit salad, scrambled eggs with bacon. The kitchen cooks country food with a lighter hand than usual, and the menu is agreed with the house before arrival.
The house, point by point
The rooms
No two of them came out the same, because none of them was built to a plan. Each has its own wood fire, its own full bathroom and air conditioning. In the en-suite rooms the bath is the wide, deep kind the houses of the last century were built around.
The park
Six hectares of laid-out park, and twenty more around them doing nothing in particular except holding the village off. What you hear from the house is whatever those twenty hectares let through, which on most days is very little.
The pool
Fifteen metres by eight, set inside a water system dug more than a hundred years ago: it held water for the estancia long before anyone swam in it. Open from October to March.
Breakfast
It keeps no hour. Coffee, tea, milk, orange juice squeezed that morning, bread and preserves made in the house, fruit salad, and eggs scrambled with bacon. Whatever else you want is agreed with the house before you arrive.
What there is to do
- Walking the park and Villa del Totoral, a village with four hundred years behind it
- Cajón de Piedra, minutes away, for the waterfalls and somewhere to eat outdoors
- Golf at Estancia La Paz and Ascochinga Golf Club, 50 km away
- Riding, from an hour out to polo and taqueo lessons with instructors who teach it properly
Where it is
Within reach
Villa del TotoralAt the gate
The village the estancia stands at the edge of, with four hundred years behind it.
Museo Octavio Pinto9 minutes on foot
The village museum given over to the Córdoba painter who lived here.
Cajón de PiedraMinutes away by car
Waterfalls, and somewhere to eat outdoors when the day is warm.
Estancia Santa Catalina38 km
A Jesuit estancia founded in 1622, and one of the sites UNESCO inscribed in 2000 as the Jesuit Block and Estancias of Córdoba.
Distances as the property and its public listing state them. We have not measured them ourselves.