A long, level wall of pale gold stone with three deep square openings, low scrub in front, a distant square tower and a large pale sky.

Built for the hottest hours.

Enter the Estate

A pale straight lane between chest-high dry-stone walls and old almond trees, ending at a small dark gate in a long stone wall.

09:30

A lane, two walls, old almonds.

The Portassa

One gate, in a blind wall.

About 3.6 m wide, with old oak doors, and nothing else opens in it.

A round-headed gateway of long worn stones in a high plain wall. One dark oak door stands open onto darkness.

The Entrada

Nine meters of dark.

Looking along a dark vaulted stone passage toward a bright opening, with a wellhead and a tree beyond.
An enclosed stone courtyard with a pebble floor, a low wellhead, one old carob tree, a stone stair and a shuttered two-storey house, half in morning shade.

Everything faces a courtyard and a well.

A long dark still pool running straight toward a thin line of sea, through dry scrub and low pines at first light.

07:30

One line, from the well to the horizon.

The same stone, about 400 years apart.

An old wall with shutters on the left, a new level stone wall with one deep square opening on the right, and a narrow gravel path between them.
Where old meets new, at the head of the Baixada.
Close view of worn old stone meeting crisp new stone, with a thin shadow line between them.
New stone, set back 3 cm.

We repaired the old house with the stone it was made from, and left its age alone. Then we did one new thing.

The day, by the hour

07:00

First swim.

The pool runs 42 m along the axis, dark enough to hold the sky.

One small swimmer leaving a thin wake across dark still water that mirrors a pale pink sky.
A pale room under a high stone cross-vault, with a stone bath before a large arched glazed opening onto dark green shade, and a low linen bed.
A Sestador suite, one vault per room.

14:00

Somewhere cool and quiet to be.

The flock waited out the heat under these vaults. It’s still the best idea on the plateau.

Two low ash and cord chairs and a clay jug on a shaded stone terrace beside a new stone wall, with bright scrub, one pine and a thin sea beyond.

17:30

After three o’clock, every terrace on the Long Wall is in shade.

That was the plan.

21:30

Dinner in the courtyard, and the tower’s dark sky.

The stone courtyard after sunset under a pale pink sky, with one long table laid for dinner under the carob and small lights on the table.

Twenty-two rooms, five kinds.

A square opening seen from inside a stone room, with a bench in the deep reveal, scrub, pines and a thin line of sea beyond, and the foot of a bed in the foreground.

Where to go next