This article is part of our Design special section on retrofits.

Nearly five centuries of Colombian history leave their mark on the buildings making up the Four Seasons Hotel that opened in Cartagena last month. Among them are a Spanish Colonial monastery built in 1562, a former 1920s social club in a palatial French style and a cluster of five movie theaters that had their heyday before television took over — all connected to a newly constructed wing that holds guest rooms.

Massive by any standard, the resort covers more than eight urban acres in this Caribbean tourist destination. Located in the Getsemani neighborhood, it is a five-minute walk to Torre del Reloj, the clock tower that serves as the main gate of Cartagena’s famous walled city.

The hotel took 18 years to complete, according to its developer, Alejandro Santo Domingo, a New Yorker with Colombian roots. His company, Valorem, also owns Colombia’s largest cinema chain, hundreds of discount grocery stores, a major newspaper and a television network.

Those enterprises, and others, have made the Santo Domingo family billionaires. Creating the hotel — and preserving important heritage sites that had been badly neglected — was a way of giving back, he said. “This is a for-profit thing, but it’s in our philanthropy bucket as a family,” Santo Domingo added. “It was a gift to Colombia and we hope everyone sees it that way because, from an investment standpoint, we wouldn’t be able to justify it.”

The Four Seasons project did not start out so big. The company began in 2008 by acquiring the movie theaters, which had been abandoned for decades. The film “Top Gun,” which came out in 1986, was still on the marquee when construction began, said Laura Acevedo, who managed the project for San Francisco Investments, a Valorem subsidiary. Santo Domingo described the buildings, with crumbling walls and caved roofs, as a war zone. “Vultures were living inside them,” he said.