On the corner of Calle 60 and Avenida Colón in Mérida—just a block off the fanciest street in town, the Paseo de Montejo—stands a pale pink mansion that has confused, intrigued, and outlived nearly everyone who’s lived here.
It’s officially called El Pinar, which means “pine grove.” Aww…loverly, right? But there was no pine grove here when it was built, no misty forest glade—just heat, limestone, and low scrub typical of the Yucatán. I’m guessing the original owners chose the name because it evoked a more European feel. Part of the broader effort by rich Méridanos to dress up their city in imported Old World elegance and airs.
Construction began in 1898 and took six years. Its design is often called Neo-Gothic, but that undersells how particular it is—French slate roofing in a place where flat roofs are the norm, red brick imported from Europe, Italian Carrara marble everywhere, and a full attic. An attic. No one has an attic in the Yucatán. But these people do. It’s also one of the rare wood-framed mansions around. It's basically a love letter to the voracious local termites.
The interior was fitted with Murano glass chandeliers from Venice, at least one excessively Baroque 17th-century Rocaille mirror, and porcelain jars from Sèvres, the town famous for supplying fine ceramics for the French royal family. The house reflected a time when henequén—a native agave plant whose tough, hemp-like fibers were used to make rope, twine, and sacks—was somehow making people rich. For decades, binding things together with scratchy plant string was big business. Well, until plastic showed up and ruined everything, as plastic is wont to do.
With money rolling in, the city's nouveau riche were eager to prove they belonged in Paris or Madrid—or, at the very least, somewhere more sophisticated than Cancún. Not all that wealth came with sustainable long-term planning, though, so the house suffered a bit after the Great Henequén Crash. (Stupid plastic.)
The mansion passed through multiple hands and long periods of silence. But it was often the subject of local gossip. People whispered endlessly about that lovely young Portuguese couple who lived there briefly in the mid-80s. The woman got rabies from a bat bite, and her husband, out of both options and his mind, confined her to her bedroom where she eventually died. NB: This was the 1980s, not the 1880s. What an idiot.
He left Mérida after that, probably to escape abandonment or manslaughter charges, and the house sat empty again, its reputation growing darker with each passing year. Until the Molina family bought it in the early 2000s.
José Trinidad Molina Castellanos built his fortune developing hotels and tourism infrastructure in Cancún and Cozumel during the late 20th century. Smart move. He got insanely rich from it. He and his wife were prominent Catholic benefactors—the kind who meet popes and wear Vatican-issued sashes to dinner.
The Molinas undertook a careful, well-funded restoration of the house and lived there for about a decade. Unlike previous owners, the Molinas had the resources and the patience to care for the home properly. Restoration included both structural repairs and careful interior conservation, with most of the original European fittings left intact or replaced in kind.
Today, El Pinar is protected as a Historical Monument of the City of Mérida—a designation it earned back in 1982—pre-bat rabies—though it took 40 years for the public to benefit from it. Guided tours walk visitors through rooms still arranged with the trappings of early 20th-century luxury. It’s not a grand palace so much as a snapshot of a specific time when Mérida wanted to be something it wasn't and occasionally managed to pull it off.
The pink mansion doesn't loom so much as it endures—awkward, ambitious, and a little out of place. Which, in Mérida, might be precisely the point.
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