The slogan “more than a hotel” can be taken quite literally. That’s the case with Casa Mãe which is also a restaurant in Lagos, a spa and a large shop where everything you see is manufactured in Portugal, and it even includes a magazine edited in the year of launch (2016) which is made from the same paper as the notebooks from Emílio Braga.
The five-star hotel occupies an old estate that was abandoned in the historic center and is distributed along the 16th-century wall. “The house was about to collapse,” recalls the former financial manager Veronique Polaert, who fell in love with the old stones and pombaline construction to the point of exchanging plans to invest in Algarve rather than Marseille. In her mind there was always the idea of it being more than a hotel, hence why the first steps have gone through a road-trip to “find new Portuguese designers working old techniques” and the cultivation of a vegetable garden that occupies much of the property.
The result of this search is seen right from the flooring choice, where the traditional rectangular brick of Santa Catarina was redesigned exclusively for the hotel. But the creative partnerships go further, from the bathroom ceramics that Ricardo Lopes created, to the La Paz robes, the Mizette Nielsen’s carpets in the same blue and white that is a protagonist in the remainder of the decoration.
There are 34 rooms spread over several buildings, between a vintage style – in the Pombaline building – and the “estival-chic”. There is no shortness of hammocks, tropical plants and sun loungers. These last ones from Lona which are personalized with an illustration of the duo Liv & Dom.