Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / Portugal / Porto / Rosa Et Al Townhouse
Rosa Et Al Townhouse
Porto, Portugal · Independent · Near Luxury
Seven suites in a nineteenth-century Rua do Rosário townhouse that spent its working life as offices and storage for the Porto publisher Livraria Civilização, then stood derelict for about fifteen years. Siblings Patrícia and Emanuel de Sousa, she a former asset manager and he an architect who trained under Peter Eisenman, opened it in August 2012 with the timber structure, the alcoves and the central stair intact. The old Civilização street sign turned up in the wreckage and hangs in the brunch room, where the Sunday roast pulls in locals who are not staying the night.
- 7 rooms
- Opened 2012
- Neighborhood: Cedofeita
- Architect: Emanuel de Sousa
- Interiors: Emanuel de Sousa; Patrícia de Sousa
About Rosa Et Al Townhouse
- The northern branch of Portugal's Order of Architects picked the restoration for its Respect for Architecture programme in 2012, the year the house opened.
- The plot is already drawn on Porto city plans from the early 1800s, and older neighbours remember the house working as a school and then a guesthouse before the publisher moved in.
- Emanuel de Sousa designed all seven suites himself, mixing vintage and retro finds with modern pieces, including cafe furniture salvaged from 1950s Berlin.
- The seventh room is the Garden Pavilion, set in the walled aromatic garden behind the house that three of the King Grand Deluxe suites also look onto.
History
The house at Rua do Rosário 233 is a traditional Porto townhouse on a narrow, deep lot, timber-framed and nineteenth century, on a plot already marked on city plans from the early 1800s. Neighbours recall it serving as a school and later a guesthouse. For much of the twentieth century it held offices and storage for the Porto publisher Livraria Civilização, until the mid 1990s, after which it stood empty for close to fifteen years and began taking water through the roof and rotting timbers.
Patrícia and Emanuel de Sousa, siblings from Espinho who studied and lived in Porto before working abroad, bought it while looking at investments from London. She had been an asset manager; he trained as an architect at FAUP and worked with Peter Eisenman and Steven Ehrlich in the United States and with Carvalho Araújo in Braga, and also founded the theatre company Ponto Teatro. They stabilised the structure, stripped out everything that was not original, and brought back the traditional elements: the central staircase, now with benches made from the house's original riga pine, the alcoves reworked as bathrooms, and the principal rooms left in place. The old Livraria Civilização street sign was found during the works and is displayed in the brunch room. Rosa Et Al Townhouse opened on 1 August 2012 with seven suites, a ground-floor reception and concept store, a brunch and dining room and a garden. It was selected by the northern branch of the Ordem dos Arquitectos for Respect for Architecture, Porto 2012, and became the first property of the founders' Bed & Brunch Collection, which later added the Early Cedofeita coffee house and restaurant and the EARLYMADE concept store.
The setting
Rua do Rosário sits in Cedofeita, between the old city and the newer nineteenth-century grid, a district known for ordinary neighbourhood trade: hardware shops, haberdashers, tile merchants. Around the corner is Rua de Miguel Bombarda, the street where Porto keeps its contemporary art and illustration galleries, its designers and craft shops, and where the galleries still open in coordinated waves. The Jardim do Palácio de Cristal and Porto's Soares dos Reis museum are a short walk south, Avenida dos Aliados and the 1906 Lello bookshop about the same distance east. The river is downhill, and the Bombarda crowd is usually the reason people stay up here instead.
Experiences
- Private parties with gastronomical experiences — Tailor-made gastronomical experiences for private parties of up to 40 people or more, depending on season and weather.
- Tailor-made experiences — Tailor-made experience built from a pre-arrival email exchange about guests' wishes for Porto and northern Portugal.
- Private city tours — Tailor-made services include private city tours.
Amenities
- Private hire of the entire townhouse
- Private parties with tailor-made gastronomical experiences
- Gourmet food and drinks prepared by the hotel's chef
- Advance booking required
- Tailor-made services ranging from a luxurious in-room spa to private city tours
Open Rosa Et Al Townhouse in the atlas for live weekend rates, photos, and the full folio.
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