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This design hotel has been wowing Lisbon since it opened on Boxing Day 2007 in an up-and-coming neighbourhood, north of the city's major sights. The building dates from 1908 and was originally a factory making iron products. Renowned Portuguese architect Francisco Aires Mateus has retained the striking façade and a few wrought-iron features from this period while opening up the central area, adding a courtyard garden with a stunning waterfall wall and cleverly integrating a new construction.
The bold lobby and bar area is particularly impressive, with black floors, black furnishings and translucent walls, the starkness softened with greens and browns from floor-to-ceiling pictures of moss and trees. The 139 guest rooms are pared down, with black and white furniture and a few surfaces of micronised cement introducing subtle textures in cream. A little fine-tuning was about to take place at the time of our visit, rethinking ill-placed mirrors and dim lighting in some of the bathrooms; a Japanese restaurant, Bonsai, had yet to open. But the hotel's other restaurant, Saldanha-Mar, serving Mediterranean dishes in an all-white setting, had already become a fashionable haunt.
WHEN TO GO
May and September, for sunshine and pleasant temperatures of around 24ºC.
ROOM TO BOOK
The nine Premium Rooms on the seventh floor have great views, balconies and bathrooms with surreal yet stylish illuminated bathtubs.
2 rua Engenheiro Vieira da Silva, Lisbon, Portugal (00 351 213 576 212; www.fontanaparkhotel.com). Doubles from 185 Euros
Find out more about Lisbon in our city guide |
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