Casa de Campo Resort & Villas

Pete Dye walked the limestone shore east of La Romana with a machete and a crew of some three hundred Dominican labourers, and the course they cut by hand, Teeth of the Dog, opened in 1971 with seven holes on the Caribbean. Casa de Campo Resort & Villas in La Romana, Dominican Republic grew up around it, and the 7,000-acre estate now has three Dye courses, a marina, polo fields, a private airport and a 16th-century-style village with a 5,000-seat amphitheatre.

History

The land belonged to Gulf and Western, the conglomerate run by Charles Bluhdorn, whose Central Romana sugar mill next door was the largest in the country. Bluhdorn wanted a resort for his executives and guests; Dye built the golf, and Oscar de la Renta, who kept a house on the estate for the rest of his life, designed the early interiors. The hotel opened in the mid-1970s. Altos de Chavón, the village on the bluff above the Chavón River, was begun in 1976 by the set designer Roberto Copa with the Dominican architect José Antonio Caro, built in coral stone by local craftsmen, and inaugurated on 20 August 1982 with Frank Sinatra, Carlos Santana, Heart and Buddy Rich playing the Concert for the Americas in its amphitheatre. When Gulf and Western sold its Dominican holdings in 1984 the resort passed to the Fanjul family's Central Romana Corporation, which still owns it.

Architecture and design

The resort is laid out as an estate rather than a hotel: hotel rooms in low blocks near the main pool, hundreds of private villas on the golf and along the shore, and the village of Altos de Chavón as its cultural centre, with the church of St Stanislaus, a regional archaeological museum, artists' studios and the Altos de Chavón School of Design, affiliated with Parsons in New York since 1983. Every guest is issued a golf cart, because the distances are too great to walk.

Rooms and suites

Hotel rooms and suites sit in garden blocks around the main pool, with terraces or balconies. The villas, with three bedrooms or more, come with staff, a private pool and a cart; many belong to owners who let them through the resort. Minitas, the resort's beach, has its own club.

Dining

The Minitas Beach Club is the daytime table on the sand. La Piazzetta in Altos de Chavón serves Italian cooking in the village at night, La Casita at the marina does seafood on the water, and Lago overlooks Teeth of the Dog for breakfast and lunch. The village and the marina together hold a dozen further bars and restaurants.

Wellness

The spa occupies its own building near the hotel, with treatment rooms, a gym and a programme that leans on the sports outside. Those sports are the point of the place: three Pete Dye courses, Teeth of the Dog, Dye Fore above the Chavón gorge and The Links; a shooting centre among the largest in the Caribbean; an equestrian centre with polo fields; a tennis centre; and the marina at the river mouth for sailing and sport fishing.

Weddings and events

Weddings are the resort's second business after golf. The church of St Stanislaus in Altos de Chavón takes the ceremony, with receptions in the village squares, at Minitas Beach, in villas or at the marina. The amphitheatre holds 5,000 for concerts, and the resort has a conference centre for meetings and incentive groups. Large villas are taken whole for family weeks.

Location

Casa de Campo sits on the south-east coast, ten minutes from La Romana International Airport, which handles private aircraft and some scheduled flights. Punta Cana International Airport is about 75 minutes east by road and Santo Domingo's Las Américas airport about 90 minutes west. There is no railway. As a luxury hotel in the Dominican Republic it is the one golfers come for first.