One-Minute Hotel / Torrel Palace, Porto
The most palatial/modern room in the whole Iberia? It could well be. Just one of the attractions of this something old/something new palaceta hotel.
So, where are we?
In Portugal’s second city, Porto, downtown by the National Theatre, round the corner from the classic Portuguese tiled Santa Francesinha church, the little shopping streets and the lavish but touristy Cafe Majestic.
And where we’re staying...?
At Torel Palace, one of a handful of lavish hotels in Porto and Lisbon in the Torel portfolio, where the emphasis is on taking grand historic buildings and throwing contemporary creativity at them. In this case, the 24 rooms and suites are dedicated to Portuguese writers (but they don’t over-hammer the theme) with culture clashes galore.
What’s the style?
There’s no getting away from the grandeur, and why would you want to when things are this, well, grand? One of the most lavish mini-palaces in town, you still have grand chandeliers and epic staircases and intricate ceilings and salons lined with books but there’s no doubt this is a modern hotel with arty twists like the installation of books flying across the ceiling in the library. Add to that a narrow lap pool shaded by foliage against a three-storey hanging garden and classic art rubbing shoulders with mid-century design classics at every turn.
And the rooms?
We are apparently in the best room in the whole hotel, the Royal Suite, and we don’t doubt it for a moment. What was once a huge almost ballroom-size space has had a mirrored cube dropped in the middle of it, meaning you have a circle of space, salon with a TV embedded in the mirror on one side, bed facing another embedded TV on the other and three huge arched and shuttered windows facing the street on the third. It’s from the window side that you enter the mirrored cube, through fringed calico curtains, and into the bathroom with light shining through the marble, antique fringed lamps coming out of the mirror and beyond the sink space your shower and toilet. But look up at that ceiling above the cube: so intricate and perfectly preserved and with the mirror cube cutting into it, you literally cannot stop taking photographs. Other rooms use the same mirrored block, albeit in less spectacular style.
Is there a story?
Opened in 2020, just in time for the pandemic, Torel Palace is housed in the lavish Palacete Campo Navarro, which dates back to the 1860s when a merchant family lived here and stored fine fabrics for export in the basement. It’s one of the finest examples of romantic architecture in the whole of Porto.
And to eat?
The bar and restaurant are called Blind, a reference to Jose Saramago’s Essay on Blindness, and are housed on the lower ground floor, with that long lap pool just outside the glass doors. Painted black, a reference to the blind motif as is the mural written in braile, and oozing sexiness, there’s a bijou circular bar for the perching up at in the middle of the room and a little side room, again super-snooky, where they lay out the breakfast buffet in the morning. Chef Vitor Matos is perfectly suited to Torel Palace as his signature is mixing tradition with contempo touches.
So, to sum up...
Bearing in mind the narrow little street Torel Palace finds itself in, albeit a minute or so from the National Theatre, you’re not quite ready for the lavishness of it all, especially that star room on the first floor face front - number 5 in case you’re thinking of treating yourself.
