From flirts on windows to jagged tiles, Casa Modesta ended up choosing the most honest name it could have. It is modest, yes, made of simple things and modesty, but also full of detail and history.
Before opening as accommodation, in a locality called Quatrim do Sul, in Olhão, and overlooking the Ria Formosa, was the home of Joaquim Modesto de Brito, a “wolf of the sea” that even wooden boats made, “as long as they were painted yellow and red”. Who tells this story is Carlos Fernandes, the grandson who played many times in the garden now open to guests, and who decided to recover the house after it was uninhabited. To help him, he had his sister, Vânia Brito Fernandes, who signed the architecture project and all the furniture together with the team of his office, PAr – a project that ended up winning the international Architizer A+Awards award, in the category of hotels and resorts, in 2017.
The house and the old warehouse where grandpa Modesto kept the clams he picked in the estuary were transformed into parallel buildings through which the nine rooms spread. The architecture is admittedly inspired by that of Olhão: cube-shaped, with white walls and large terraces that formerly served to dry fruit and fish and are now perfect for enjoying the view from a sun lounger.
Here and there, modesty holds ingenious surprises: the same stairs used to access one of the terraces serve to delimit small patios with a swing net, for example, and inside the rooms the closet and a sliding door divide the sleeping area from the bathroom.
In addition to the dog Modesto, 2020 brought other novelties: garden furniture made in partnership with Oficina 166, in sea rope, and a replica of the “fisherman’s huts that existed in the Deserta, Fuseta and Armona islands”. Covered with thatched and placed by the tank/pool, in summer it serves as a reading retreat, and in winter it serves as a sauna.
Sweat, for now, only if it is in front of the old oven, where the grandmother still makes bread “whenever she wants”, or pedaling on one of the available bikes – preferably in the ecovia that passes very close to the house and that allows walking through the middle of the marshes, in the middle of the Ria Formosa Natural Park.