Santiago de Alfama

The Hotel

Santiago de Alfama opened in 2015 inside a building whose origins are layered to the point of running the entire history of the Lisbon hill from Roman occupation onward. Excavations during the renovation revealed a fragment of Roman bath complex in the cellar (preserved and viewable behind glass in the wine cellar today); the upper floors are a 15th-century palace built by the Cabral family — a younger branch of the same Cabral lineage as Pedro Álvares Cabral, the navigator who reached Brazil in 1500 — with original Manueline window mouldings preserved in the public rooms; the further upper floors were 19th-century additions made when the property was a private house and inn. The restoration, by Lisbon-based architect Luís Rebelo de Andrade, took five years through to the 2015 opening, and was thorough — the Manueline detailing reinstated, the original wooden ceilings restored, the Roman fragment carefully integrated into the wine cellar, the rooftop and the gardens reorganised.

The 19 rooms are the property's deliberate central proposition: every one is differently shaped, every one differently named, every one differently sized, every one with a different orientation onto the medieval Alfama lanes outside. Standard categories run small (12 to 18 square metres in a few cases — the building does not allow any other arrangement), but the four named suites (the Santiago Suite, the Riccaboni Suite, the Cabral Suite, the Mestre Manuel Suite) are the headline units, with the Santiago Suite — small but with a private balcony at the top of the building looking across the Alfama tile rooftops to the Tagus and the Vasco da Gama Bridge — the most-requested room in inventory. Bathrooms are travertine; the rooms use Aromatherapy Associates products; soft furnishings are mainly Portuguese textiles by Burel.

Audrey's is the hotel's restaurant — named after the owner's mother and serving an Iberian-Mediterranean menu in the original palace ground-floor hall, with the Manueline window preserved at the head of the dining room. The wine cellar — visible Roman bath fragment included — is the private dining room and accommodates eight guests under the brick vault. Breakfast is served in the lobby drawing room. There is no spa or pool — the building cannot accommodate either — but the rooftop terrace is a workable outdoor space at sunset, and the hotel arranges spa treatments at the larger nearby five-stars on request. The hotel is owner-managed by the Riccaboni family (the founders are Italian-American), and every guest is welcomed by name; service is the consistent first line of every review.

The position is the Alfama proper — Rua de Santiago is the medieval lane that runs along the back of the Sé Cathedral towards the Castelo de São Jorge; the cathedral is 90 seconds' walk west, the castle 6 minutes' walk uphill east, the Tagus 5 minutes downhill south. For travellers who want the most architecturally distinctive Lisbon small-luxury booking — the building, the Roman fragment, the Manueline detailing, the family ownership, the small scale that makes service personal — there is no equivalent in the city. The disadvantage is the building: medieval lanes do not allow car drop-off at the door (luggage transfer is on foot from the nearest cab access), and the rooms run smaller than the contemporary luxury norm. For the right guest the building is the booking proposition, and the smaller-room footprint is part of the experience rather than a compromise.

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