The Luxury Travel Magazine
The Luxury Travel Magazine
The Palacete Severo is Porto’s most refined luxury boutique hotel. A 5* oasis of calm and culture in Portugal’s second city. But for decades its timeless elegance was almost lost.
In 1902, the Palacete Severo was built with love, for a new beginning. Ricardo Severo returned to Porto from political exile in Brazil. Architect, engineer, republican and dreamer he came home changed but not alone. For his new Brazilian bride, Francisca, he designed a little palace: expressive, intimate, confident. In the oak panels of the library their initials remain entwined. A quiet declaration of love that survives more than a century later.
The palace rises in regal Mediterranean yellow. Its façade catching Porto’s shifting light. Azulejo tiles glint and cool. Carved staircases curve upward with ceremonial grace. Stained glass windows soften daylight as they tell their vividly coloured stories.
The Palacete was more than a paean to his wife, it was also a love letter to Portugal. He had longed for his homeland during the long years of exile. His architect’s plans exalted the nation’s crafts at the dawn of the twentieth century. High ceilings spoke of hope; tiled mosaic floors of permanence. Porto, like the Palacete, was looking forward.
Ricardo and Francisca aged. Their seven children left the Palacete and decades passed. The palace aged, weathered, and grew quiet. Then, in another century, it was loved again. In October 2024, the Palacete Severo reopened as a five-star boutique hotel and contemporary art gallery. A moment of stillness in Porto’s creative Cedofeita neighbourhood.
For its new owner, Géraldine Banier, it is an annex of her Parisian Gallery. Art now flows through the building as freely as light. Paintings line corridors, sculptures inhabit gardens, and almost everything is for sale. The Palacete lives, breathes and evolves again.
A porter appears as your taxi pauses on Rua de Ricardo Severo, taking your bags along a path ascending through ancient camellia trees, past roses improbably still blooming in December. Inside, the welcome is warm. Strawberries, petit fours, and a brochure for the current exhibition await in your suite. Hospitality embroidered with culture.
There are eleven rooms in the original house, each shaped by history. Oak floors carry the patina of more than a century’s footsteps. Wicker headboards crown wide beds dressed with crisp linens. Off the main room, a small vestibule becomes a study for planning Porto’s pleasures: art, beach, fado, port, seafood, surfing and Portugal’s tasty take on their neighbour’s tapas.
Discretely equipped with modern comforts – air conditioning, refrigerator and television – Severo himself would have approved of the attention to detail. Nine further rooms in a sensitively designed extension offer the same quiet temptation: to check out of everyday life and check in to something slower and deeper.
Mornings begin gently. Breakfast is served in the Bistro. A covered courtyard of azulejo tiles, stained glass and a sculpted water feature; the serpent-like “S” of Severo’s design legacy still flowing in stone. Stories season the meal. Salted butter arrives from the Azores. Beans from Arabia, Colombia and Ethiopia are ground and blended on site to create a distinctive house coffee.
Many guests linger long after breakfast, reluctant to step out into the noise of this century. Some drift to the spa, to the Himalayan salt room, steam room and soothing treatments administered by Thelma with a practised, intuitive calm. Even in winter, some guests slip into the heated outdoor saltwater pool fringed by orange tries. Though Porto’s winters are usually benign. Whilst other guests, relaxing with a book in the library, simply wait for chef Tiago Bonito’s lunch menu.
Bonito is reshaping Portuguese gastronomy within the Palacete’s walls. Having earned a Michelin star at his previous restaurant, his vision is both reverent and daring, both traditional and innovative. At Eon, the fine dining restaurant, the taster menus are not courses but “Moments” in culinary time.
Bonito’s moments are invitations to his memories: childhood in Coimbra, learning his craft along the Algarve, the sweep of Portuguese exploration. A ceviche prawn rests above a tiny tumbler of warm jus. Hake is hook-caught, tuna arrives from the Azores, Madeira wine binds hemispheres in a cheese and chestnut macaron. Barnacles, endlessly battered by Atlantic waves, dare to rival oysters. Whilst ethereal candy, almost floating on a Bonsai tree, shades churros anda bowl of popcorn ice-cream. Alongside the tastings runs a wine flight drawn exclusively from Portugal’s finest vineyards.
Before dinner at the bar, Pedro the mixologist forages botanicals from the gardens, scours the tastes of the world for inspiration. He replaces sugar syrup with Granny Smith purée, soda with ginger ale. Though he insists that an Old Fashioned is already perfect.
The Palacete Severo is Porto’s most refined luxury boutique hotel, embracing travellers and welcomes them as guests. It shares Porto’s past and present with a privileged few. An architect’s dream house, born of devotion, reborn through care, once again looks to the future with hope.
All photographs: Rupert Eden
