Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / Portugal / Carvalhal / Na Praia
Na Praia
Carvalhal, Portugal · Independent · Accessible Luxury · Opening soon
José António Uva, the hotelier behind São Lourenço do Barrocal, first walked this stretch of Tróia dune in 2011 and spent more than a decade shrinking the resort he was allowed to build here, cutting the approved building area by about eighty percent and replanting native dune flora. Studio KO designed 113 suites, houses and villas in raw earth, clay and timber across 340 hectares with two kilometres of beach. A fire in March 2026 postponed the planned June opening.
- 113 rooms
- Architect: Studio KO
- Not open yet
About Na Praia
- Sandra Ortega, heir to the Inditex fortune behind Zara, is Uva's partner in the roughly 250 million euro resort, on land bought from Sonae.
- Thomas Doxiadis of the Athens landscape practice Doxiadis+ shaped the dune landscape around the earth and timber buildings.
- The fire, investigated by Portugal's Polícia Judiciária, damaged about fifty metres of one building; the guest units, restaurant and public areas were unharmed.
History
Na Praia began in 2011, when the Portuguese hotelier Jose Antonio Uva first walked a wild stretch of the Troia peninsula on the Alentejo coast. Uva is the eighth-generation steward of Sao Lourenco do Barrocal, the farm hotel at Reguengos de Monsaraz; where Barrocal looks inward to Alentejo agriculture, Na Praia turns to the Atlantic. The land, 340 hectares of dune and pine bought from Sonae, is held in partnership with Sandra Ortega, heir to the Inditex group behind Zara, in a project reported at around 250 million euros.
The design team is Studio KO of Paris (Karl Fournier and Olivier Marty), the Athens landscape practice Doxiadis+ under Thomas Doxiadis, and Uva's own development firm Estudio Lisboa. The scheme was contentious: environmental groups won an injunction in 2023 over the impact on the dunes and vegetation. What followed was a reversal. After months of ecological study the team reduced the approved construction area by about eighty percent, removed invasive species and set about restoring native flora, with the landscape architect Filipe Soares of Sigmetum describing the work as an ecological restoration of the dune system. The buildings that did go up use raw earth, local clay and timber, sited to sit low in the dunes.
The finished resort holds 113 keys across suites, houses and villas, with private pools on many, plus a spa and four restaurants, among them Mogo from Joao Rodrigues of the Lisbon restaurant Canalha. Opening was set for 1 June 2026 and bookings were taken, but a fire in the early hours of 8 March 2026 damaged roughly fifty metres of one building in the centre of the hotel and the opening was postponed. Uva said the villas, public areas, restaurant and service zones were untouched and that repair work would begin immediately. It is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World.
The setting
The resort occupies the dunes of the Troia peninsula, the long sand spit that closes the Sado estuary south of Setubal, about nine kilometres from Comporta beach. This is the coast that Lisbon calls the Costa Azul, running down through Comporta and Carvalhal to Melides, a stretch of rice paddies, cork oak and pine behind low dunes that has drawn a great deal of money in the last decade. Na Praia has about two kilometres of Atlantic beach in front of it and a nature reserve behind, with the Sado estuary and its resident bottlenose dolphins to the north and the Serra da Arrabida across the water. There is no village attached; the point of the place is the emptiness.
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