Ex Hotel Palace, Art Nouveau hotel building in Iquitos, Peru.
The Ex Hotel Palace is a three-story Art Nouveau building in Iquitos situated along Malecón Tarapacá. It features wrought iron balconies with plant motifs, intricate metalwork, and tall entrance portals that display the European design vocabulary of its era.
The structure was built between 1908 and 1912 under engineer Samuel Young Mass and architect José Altamira y Motta during the peak of the Amazon rubber trade. Its construction marks a moment of intense wealth and European influence in this remote South American city.
The building displays ornamental tiles from Málaga and decorative metalwork that were brought from Europe to this remote location. These imported materials reflect how wealth from the rubber trade allowed local elites to create spaces that rivaled those in distant European cities.
The building now serves as an administrative office and is located one block from the Plaza de Armas, making it easy to reach. Visitors should view and photograph it from the street, as it is a government building.
The building appeared on a 1 Sol commemorative coin in 2014 as a representation of the Loreto Region in the series 'Wealth and Pride of Peru'. This honor shows how significant the structure remains to regional identity and historical memory.
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