Villa Fosca Tulum Review: A Villa Built Around a Courtyard

In this contributor feature, Deborah Kombe checks into Villa Fosca, Tulum, a four-bedroom property inside a private gated community in Aldea Zama, and finds that the thing holding the whole house together was in plain sight for three days before she noticed it. From a glass-enclosed shower under the Mexican sky to a laundry room that quietly redeems the week after a holiday, this is a stay built around something living.

It’s a Tuesday morning in London and I’ve just finished my early tidy, rounding it off the way I always do, by spraying the house with a new scent a friend brought me back from China. Fresh, light, distinct enough that you’d recognise it anywhere.

And then I was in Tulum. Not thinking about Tulum. In it. Standing in the entrance at Villa Fosca with my bag still on my shoulder, fifteen months after I’d left.

Some places you remember for the view. Villa Fosca lives in my memory as a smell, and I mean that as the highest compliment I have.

First impressions

We arrived in the late afternoon and the scent got me before anything else did. Before the courtyard, before the rooftop, before I’d put my bag down. Sweet citrus, a whisper of floral, and a creamy, comforting finish. It’s Coqui Coqui’s Room Diffuser in Flor de Naranjo, a detail I only know because I asked, and then kept asking about, and then spent the rest of the stay inhaling like an addict.

I genuinely considered putting the whole diffuser in my suitcase. That is the closest I have come to becoming the exact kind of person I have always judged. You know the ones. They leave a hotel with the bathroom miniatures. Possibly a towel. In my defence, I wasn’t even the worst offender. One of my friends, who knows exactly who she is, put droplets of it into her suitcase so the smell would be waiting for her when she unpacked in London.

The house

Villa Fosca is one of Jashita Villas’ properties, set inside La Privada, a gated community within Aldea Zama, around an hour and a half from Cancún airport. Three storeys, four double bedrooms each with an en suite, a ground floor living area and kitchen, a central courtyard, and a rooftop with a pool and dining area. It sleeps up to eight.

You’re welcomed by a large cream-coloured door which, once opened, gives you the courtyard in full view before you have taken a step inside. Look right and there’s the kitchen, with jungle green filling the French-style floor-to-ceiling window behind it. Look left and there’s the living area, modern but warm, soft wooden accents tying it together. The hallways are dotted with oversized ceramic pots and light pours down from the roof, through the courtyard, into the house.

There were four of us, which meant a double bedroom and bathroom each. Generous is one word for it.

The details that mattered

The shower is the first place I noticed how considered the design was. The roof and the upper half of three walls are glass, so you’re showering outside without being outside. There’s a particular kind of luxury in standing under water with the sky above you and no possibility of anyone seeing you. It’s a small architectural decision that changes the whole experience of getting ready in the morning.

Then the laundry room, which I want to talk about seriously even though nobody writes about laundry rooms. It’s stocked with a washing machine, a dryer and products, which meant we flew home with every item of holiday clothing already washed, dried and ready to go straight back into the wardrobe. No suitcase of damp swimwear sitting by the machine for four days. No Sunday spent undoing a holiday. Someone had thought about what the week after the trip would feel like, not just the week of it. I have stayed in far more expensive places that never got close to that.

We spent most of our time on the rooftop. There’s a pool up there, sun loungers, a dining area and a grill, and nothing much between you and the sky except jungle in the middle distance. It became the default. Someone would go up for ten minutes and the rest of us would find them there an hour later.

Our last golden hour happened up there, before a ten-hour journey home. The light in Tulum does something generous at that time of day, and we stayed in it until we genuinely had to leave. There are worse ways to say goodbye to a place.

The thing I didn’t notice until day three

Not that the courtyard was there. You can’t miss it. What I noticed on day three was that I could see it from almost everywhere.

I drew back my curtains in the morning and there it was. I walked to my friends’ rooms and it was in full view from the hallway. It was there from the kitchen, from the living room, from the turn in the stairs. And the one that stopped me was standing on the roof and catching the tops of the courtyard trees, still climbing, reaching up past the building to meet the sky.

Three days in a house before I understood its organising principle. The courtyard isn’t a feature of the house. The house is an arrangement around the courtyard. Every room has been positioned so that whatever you are doing, something living is in your eyeline.

The house was built around life, and not the other way around.

Getting around

Villa Fosca sits in La Privada, a gated community within Aldea Zama, which is Tulum’s purpose-built residential neighbourhood and about four kilometres from the town centre. Both the town centre and the Tulum beach road are under ten minutes away, and there are groceries and restaurants within 500 metres of the villa itself.

We didn’t hire a car and never felt we needed one. Ubers are plentiful, cheap, and the obvious way to get around. We used them for everything apart from the beach club. Aldea Zama also has its own restaurants, shops, yoga studios and markets, so if you do want to walk somewhere, there is somewhere to walk to, which is not true of every villa in Tulum.

The gated community runs 24-hour security with QR code entry to the villa. Practically, that means you can come back at any hour without thinking about it.

The beach club

As Jashita Villas guests we had complimentary access to the Jashita hotel and beach club, which sits 15km north of Tulum in Soliman Bay, around twenty minutes away. A daily shuttle between the villas and the hotel is included in the rate, so neither the transport nor the beach access costs anything extra. You pick your own time, you just need to book it in advance rather than deciding on the morning.

Food, drinks and spa treatments at the hotel are charged separately.

How we spent our days

Slowly, is the honest answer.

We’d come from four nights at Jungle V, where we’d each had our own lodge. Close together, but separate buildings, which meant going outside every time you wanted the kitchen or the pool or anyone else. Lovely in its own way. The mosquitos were thrilled about it.

At Villa Fosca we were suddenly all under one roof again, and it turned out that was what we’d been missing. We ran in and out of each other’s rooms. We had long breakfasts that nobody was trying to end. We spent whole afternoons on the rooftop doing very little, ordered food in more than we went out, watched films, and laughed the kind of laugh that makes your stomach hurt, repeatedly, usually about nothing.

We did go out. Dinner at Loco Tulum, breakfast ordered in from Nimeño, a full day at the beach club. But the days I remember most clearly are the ones where we barely left.

Build that in on purpose. The temptation in Tulum is to fill every hour, and this is not a house that punishes you for staying in it.

Who it’s for

Three stays on one trip taught me something about how I want to travel with people.

We started in Cancún. Four of us, one hotel room, two beds. Fine for a night, and you learn a great deal about your friends very quickly. Cue Priscilla kicking me in my sleep.

Then Jungle V, where we each had a lodge of our own. Beautiful, genuinely restorative, and separate enough that being together took a bit of effort and a reapplication of insect repellent.

Villa Fosca was the middle I hadn’t known I was looking for. Four bedrooms, four en suites, four doors to close. But one kitchen, one living room, one rooftop, one courtyard that follows you around the house. Privacy without distance. We ended up in the same rooms as each other constantly, not because we had to be, but because the house kept putting us there.

That’s what I’d tell someone deciding. Four hotel rooms would have given us the doors and nothing else. This gave us the doors and somewhere worth being together.

If there are more of you, Villa Fosca sits next door to its twin, Villa Virginia, and the two can be taken together as Villa Imperia for eight bedrooms.

And give yourself at least one slow day. The courtyard thing only landed on day three, which tells you how much of the house I was actually seeing before then.

Fifteen months on and a bottle of scent from China can still put me back in that entrance hall with my bag on my shoulder. That tells me everything I need to know about whether I’m going back. Jashita, consider this notice.

Villa Fosca Tulum: the essentials

Villa Fosca sleeps up to eight across four double bedrooms, each with an en suite. Three storeys, with a ground floor kitchen and living area, a central courtyard, a rooftop pool and dining area, and a laundry room stocked with a washing machine, dryer and products.

The villa sits in La Privada, a 24-hour gated community within Aldea Zama, around an hour and a half from Cancún airport and under ten minutes from both Tulum town centre and the beach road. Tulum now has its own international airport, which is considerably closer if the routes work for you.

Guests receive complimentary access to the Jashita Tulum hotel and beach club in Soliman Bay, with a daily shuttle included in the rate.

Rates vary by season. At the time of writing, two nights in late November came to $2,030, a little over $1,000 a night, while two nights in September came closer to $880. With a full group of eight that works out at roughly $110 to $127 per person per night.

Book at jashitatulumluxuryvillas.com or Airbnb.

Deborah stayed at Villa Fosca in July 2025 as a guest of Jashita Villas. All views are her own.

Writer & Photographer

Deborah Kombe is a London-based writer and photographer crafting immersive stories and visual narratives that explore culture, travel and lifestyle.

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