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The Vintage Hotel & Spa - Lisbon
Lisbon, Portugal · Independent · Accessible Luxury
Quiet Studios rebuilt this five-star as a love letter to the 1950s, and the details are the reason to come: a Calder-inspired brass and silver mobile hanging over the lobby, Danish chairs by Kai Kristiansen and Erik Buch, Costa Nova crockery, Viarco pencils, Couto toothpaste, and a bar cart in every room with an Alentejo gin kit. The colours are borrowed from the neighbours, deep green for the Botanical Garden five minutes away, blue for the Tagus, terracotta for the rooftops. The spa pool is underground, and the V Rooftop looks across at Sao Jorge castle.
- 56 rooms
- Opened 2019
- Neighborhood: Avenida da Liberdade
- Rooms from 280 sq ft (26 m²)
- Interiors: Quiet Studios with Foster and Bloom (2018-2019)
About The Vintage Hotel & Spa - Lisbon
- Morningbridge bought the hotel in 2017 out of one of Portugal's state-controlled bad banks, then closed it for a full rebuild that ran through 2018 and finished in 2019.
- The hotel keeps a small fleet of MOKEs, open-sided electric runabouts, that guests can take out by the hour or for a whole day.
- Fifty-six rooms and three suites, and the same group runs The Lumiares, the converted Bairro Alto palace a short climb up the hill.
- The gin-and-tonic kit on the room bar cart follows a recipe by the Portuguese mixologist Nino Lopez, using Sharish from the Alentejo.
- Entry-level rooms start at 280 sq ft (26 m²).
History
The Vintage Hotel & Spa is a rescue rather than a conversion. Morningbridge bought it in 2017 as a poorly performing hotel from one of the state-controlled bad banks left over from Portugal's banking crisis, judged the building itself excellent, and gutted everything else. The renovation started in January 2018 and worked through the rooms first, then the lobby, the Hangout, the meeting rooms, the spa and the V Rooftop, finishing in 2019 with a repaint of the exterior that December.
The design is the substance of the place. Quiet Studios, working with the creative consultants Foster and Bloom, took the hotel's name literally and built an interior around mid-century modernism: original pieces alongside bespoke reproductions, with a suspended brass and silver mobile by Lappalainen in the lobby that nods to Alexander Calder. Chairs are by Kai Kristiansen, Poul Cadovius and Erik Buch. Everything else flies the Portuguese flag on purpose, which is Bomporto's habit: Costa Nova crockery, Viarco pencils, Claus Porto soaps, Couto toothpaste, drawings and collages by Brian de Graft and Joao Rei, and a bar cart in each room with a gin-and-tonic kit made to a recipe by the mixologist Nino Lopez using Alentejo gin. The three colour palettes across the rooms come straight from outside the windows: dark green for the Botanical Garden nearby, blue for the Tagus and the Atlantic, terracotta for the roofs.
The hotel has 56 rooms including three suites, a spa with an underground swimming pool, underground parking, the Blue restaurant and bar with a hanging vertical garden and a patio, and the V Rooftop, which does cocktails, castle views and occasional outdoor film screenings. It is managed by Bomporto Hotels and owned by the Vintage Private Equity Fund.
The setting
The hotel sits on Rua Rodrigo da Fonseca in the Santo Antonio parish, about three hundred metres uphill from Avenida da Liberdade, which puts it on the seam between the grand boulevard and the two districts people actually want to walk in. The Botanical Garden and the National Museum of Natural History and Science are about five minutes away on foot. Principe Real, with its garden, its mansion-lined streets, its concept shops and its restaurants, is just above. Bairro Alto and Chiado are a short but properly steep walk, which is the standing caveat on this address: everything is close, and some of it is uphill. Avenida metro is roughly ten minutes down, and the airport is six kilometres out.
Restaurants and bars
- Blue Bistrot — Restaurant
Experiences
- Rooftop views of Lisbon's skyline with a self-mixed drink — Guests mix a drink from the in-room vintage bar cart and take it to the rooftop to enjoy views of Lisbon's skyline.
Amenities
- Rooftop with views of Lisbon's skyline
- Early check-in and late check-out subject to availability
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