- Jade Conroy
13 JUNE 2016 • 2:45PM
For Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton it was love at first sight. For each other, of course, but also for the magnificent Bay of Banderas on Mexico's Pacific coast, where their much-publicised affair began in earnest in the picturesque fishing village of Puerto Vallarta. It started after Taylor joined Burton on the set of John Huston's The Night of the Iguana in 1963, which was being filmed in the region. They had met in Rome two years previously (while filming Cleopatra) but Mexico is where things heated up.
Photographs of the pair from their time in Puerto Vallarta show them with bronzed skin and loved-up smiles, splashing about in the waves, luxuriating on yachts and drinking in thatched-roofed "palapa bars", an unending round of coco rums on the tables beside them.
The Elizabeth Taylor Suite at Casa Kimberly
The Mexico of those evocative photographs still exists today - and no more so than at Casa Kimberly, the colonial-style former home of the Burtons, which for the past few months has been serving as the ultimate celebrity-chic romantic hotel bolt-hole.
The story goes that Burton bought Taylor a house opposite his own, the two being connected by a pink replica of Venice's Bridge of Sighs - and that Burton was banished over it to the other side of the house whenever the pair had one of their famously tempestuous rows. Now painted white, the bridge is still there, as is the original heart-shaped bathtub commissioned by Taylor in what was her former bedroom.
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico CREDIT: ALAMY
The hotel's nine suites are huge - a fitting homage to the couple who used to book out entire hotel floors on their travels - and come complete with exotic bathrooms with free-standing tubs surrounded by crystal lampshades and ferns; many also have wraparound balconies and views out over the glittering bay. The VIPs, the room in which I stayed, had an open shower backed by hand-painted tiles.
The soul of the Burtons is still very much there: a bronze statue of the pair by the front door can be seen from the street; there's a painting of Taylor, her violet eyes staring at you as you ascend the stairs; vintage posters of the pair adorn the central, fountain-filled courtyard. Manna from movie-star heaven.
The soul of the Burtons is still very much there"