One Night in Faro, a Modernist Haven in Southern Europe

Welcome to One Night In, a series about staying in the most unparalleled places available to rest your head.

In 2021, locked down in Los Angeles, I fantasized about traveling to Faro, Portugal. Through my job as an editor, I met hoteliers Christophe and Angelique de Oliveira, who emailed photos of Faro, their adopted city, and introduced me to tropical modernism, an architectural style that blends European modernist principles with an approach that responds to hot, humid climates. I swooned over the Wes Anderson-like color palettes, cobogós (breeze blocks), and columns á la Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. They told me the city had over 500 largely untouched modernist buildings, most designed by 20th-century Portuguese architect Manuel Gomes da Costa, known for his work in the Algarve region. They also said they were founding a Modernist Weekend in Faro inspired by the annual event in Palm Springs. I said I’d come when it happened. 

In November 2022, I went to Faro’s first Modernist Weekend with 150 other attendees. When I was invited back to the event last year, and the recently revamped Gomes da Costa–designed Alto House hotel offered to host me, I returned with glee. This time, the weekend had evolved, and 450 design lovers jumped at the chance to take walking tours of the city, the Fifth Avenue of modernist architecture in Faro, Avenida 5 de Outubro, and an array of Gomes da Costa–designed coastal homes. I packed my best period-appropriate garb and set off for Faro. 

Thursday

3 p.m.: I land at the Faro International Airport and order an Uber to Rua de Berlim, a sunny, pastel-hued street of stately villas constructed between 1959 and 1969, about half of them by Gomes da Costa. Initially, the design for these buildings had flat roofs per modernist principles, but when Faro City Hall refused to allow it, the architect caved and made them sloped. The villas were commissioned by Algarvian emigrants who left the region in the 1920s for Latin America, accumulated wealth, and returned to Faro in the ’50s. In 2023, one of them was converted into the 21-room Alto House hotel by local architect João Coutinho. 

Before I traveled, I spoke to Coutinho on Zoom, and he told me he almost named the hotel "Taxi," after Portuguese cabs from the ’60s and ’70s. His reasoning? These cars represented the modernist period before Portugal’s revolution, and their colors—bottle green and black—were the colors he wanted to design with. Coutinho ended up using "Alto," the word Portuguese people use to flag taxis, for the name. It also means "high," which is fitting, as the hotel sits on a tall elevation for the Algarve capital. From my room’s private balcony, my gaze reaches the city, sea, and mountains. 

6 p.m.: I take a 15-minute Uber to Fábrica da Cerveja, a former castle-turned-beer factory with plans to be an art center in Old Town for Faro Modernist Weekend’s art exhibition, Modernist Explorations, spotlighting bodies of work directly inspired by Faro. I wobble down the cobblestone streets surrounded by walls built in the Roman period and later fortified by the Moors. It’s dark, and the Fábrica’s peeling ochre facade, built between 1930 and 1940, is spookily gorgeous. Inside, architecture and art lovers sip cocktails and a deejay spins. I admire the colorful, Faro-inspired art of British artist Richard Walker, Dutch artist Sander Patelski, and French photographer Michel Figuet. 

8:30 p.m.: I’m exhausted from traveling and return to Alto House to shower and sleep. An Uber drops me off on the lamplit, tree-lined street that faces a park, and I unlatch the gate on Alto’s little white fence. It feels like I’m coming home, like I should be carrying my mail in with me. An unmanned, velvet-skirted, and Lynchian front desk shakes the feeling for a moment, and three flights up, my weary eyes appreciate the dark terrazzo walls and smoked-glass bedside bubble lamps. Crisp, cool sheets cradle me to sleep.

Friday 

9 a.m.: Having slept off my jet lag, I wake up ravenously hungry. I descend to the hotel’s first floor, where I am pleased to find a prepared breakfast of avocado slices, rye crisps, and vegan yogurt, as I alerted the staff of my veganism ahead of the trip (the breakfast buffet is included in all bookings). A few other scattered guests, also here for Modernist Weekend, eat cheeses, meat, bread, and melon while discussing the tours they’re set to go on today. I try to wake my brain up by sipping a cappuccino and translating Portuguese from the TV streaming the local news. (I’m fluent in Spanish and surprised by the similarities.) The open back door carries in a breeze from the adjoining patio, which is anchored by a rose quartz-hued stone floor, bistro tables, and a low white wall lined with vintage mirrors.

10 a.m.: I share an Uber with a German journalist to the Aeromar Hotel, also designed by Gomes da Costa. Here, we meet artist Richard Walker, who lives nearby and will give the 1.5-hour From Bauhaus to Beach House walking tour. Walker takes us by boat to a spit of land between the Atlantic Ocean and Rio Formosa, where we see a blue-and-white home—the homeowner believes it was designed by an architect from Loulé named Manuel Laginha—with so many diagonal angles it looks like a Russian Constructivist poster. Walker compares it to a spaceship.

2 p.m.: After an amble to the pharmacy and a sandwich at the buzzing Faro municipal market, I arrive for the Faro Vision tour. Walker is leading this one, too. We weave through the city and admire the details: colorful and graphic azulejos, a pair of butterfly-shaped door handles, and Gomes da Costa’s signature Z-shaped stairs in an open apartment lobby are a few favorites. 

6:30 p.m.: I’m back at Fábrica da Cerveja for the Modernist Heritage: Past or Present? conference. It’s exciting because Czech architecture editor, writer, and photographer Adam Štěch, who I’ve followed for a while on Instagram, is giving a presentation about the modernist buildings he’s photographed around the world. That he’s here means Faro’s allure is reaching the right people. Carlos Oliveira Santos, who has authored several books about Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer’s work, gives a talk about the anti-modernism oath of the Roman Catholic clergy and how modernists like Niemeyer sought to improve people’s lives through design. In fact, Niemeyer and Brazil’s modernist architecture were a powerful inspiration for Gomes da Costa. 

8 p.m.: I meet Christophe, Angelique, and several of their friends at Tertulia Algarvia, where the kitchen blessedly whips me up a vegan cataplana (Portugal’s answer to Morocco’s tagine). Another restful slumber is imminent.  

Saturday 

9 a.m.: I take my avocado and crisps to the flat rooftop of Alto House, with its low white ledge surrounded by pitched terracotta roofs and a cheerful minaret in one corner. I recline into one of many mustard-colored, perforated patio chairs and work on my sci-fi novel under the bright sun. At some point, a church or school bell rings charmingly in the pastoral distance and a spray of seabirds flap southwestward.

10 a.m.: I attend the Modernist Architecture tour hosted by Christophe, in which everyone swoons over the city’s modernist show ponies, all by Gomes da Costa: particularly Casa Gago, rising from pilotis on a corner lot and covered in a second skin of cobogós to provide shade (Faro gets over 300 days of sunshine a year), Edifício Sol, a seven-floor residential building with golden sunburst azulejos, and the Rebela da Silva building, flaunting Bauhausian colors and geometry. 

4:30 p.m.: A 10-minute Uber delivers me to the open house at Casa 1923, a former Jesuit school turned affluent family’s home. When Faro architect Vânia Brito Fernandes found it abandoned and for sale, the ornate Art Nouveau facade gleamed with every tile intact, but the interior was in ruins. She purchased it and her all-women firm PAr architecture studio turned the residence into a mixed-use gem with an organic vegetable garden and rooftop pool.

6 p.m.: I’m back in my room at Alto House, taking timed photos of my disco-ready self in front of the vintage taxi-colored curtains. I order an Uber to Hotel Aeromar. Upon arrival, I spot Richard as "DJ Dickie," striking a pose in his leopard-print bell-bottoms next to an old fireplace crowned by a faded lifesaver emblazoned with "bem-vindo" ("welcome"). "Rock Lobster" by The B-52’s is playing. It’s time to boogie.

12:30 a.m.: Gripping Alto House’s original dark wood bannister with elegant, white-painted vertical rods, I climb the stairs to my room and wash off the night’s sweat and sparkle. I slide into my cozy bed with Baccara’s "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" stuck in my head. I hope to find myself back here in Faro every November.

Top photo by photo by Aymeric Warmé-Janville

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