Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin It’s always a wonderful thing when a full-on renovation fully respects the roots of a historic edifice—be it hotel, museum, or modest private home—and doesn’t erase the past. While that’s certainly not always the case (talking to you, NYC), a recent major hotel project in Lisbon absolutely hit the sweet spot of rejuvenating the past and modernizing at the same time. Iconic rooftop sign at the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon Credit: CHUTTERSNAP Sitting above the huge Marquis of Pombal Square at the top of swank and leafy Liberdade Avenue, and overlooking the stately 64-acre Eduardo VII Park as well, the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon is an icon as the city’s first prominent Modernist structure.
But as the 1959 hotel hadn’t been worked on over its sixty-five years of existence—known originally simply as the Ritz, the property has been a part of Four Seasons since 1997—how easy it could have been to have just gutted it and started all over. We can be thankful that restraint prevailed over this structure that’s listed as a Public Interest Monument. You can step today into these ten stories that give off a Corbusian sense of scale and shape and feel like you entered that same era that gave us works like Park Avenue’s Seagram Building.
And that deep consideration of the past included honoring the property’s original renowned art collection (a post on the collection will follow). Right off the bat, the enormous and cheerful lobby flowers are themselves quite a production. Get off an elevator and what strikes you next is that the landings with plush wing chairs are lounges in themselves and sizable enough to hold a board meeting.
That generous space would certainly never fly today in square-foot-conscious hotel design. As you walk the wide mirrored hallway to your room, light reflected from the sconces casts a golden glow on the dark wood and textile walls, and over the carpet whose shapes suggest Portugal’s traditional calçada blocks. MORE FOR YOU Hackers Force Chrome Users To Hand Over Google Passwords, Here’s How Google Chrome Deadline—You Have 72 Hours To Update Your Browser Musk Posts Then Deletes ‘No One Is Even Trying To Assassinate Biden/Kamala’ The new pool at the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon is now part of the original terrace bar.
Credit: Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon The hotel describes its styles as Art Deco, Louis XVI and Mid-Century Modern over its 282 rooms and suites. Credit for the revival goes to the firm Oitoemponto who have a client list that ranges from cruise ships to vineyard manors. Here, where the decades had slowly stripped away the past created by French designer Henri Samuel, the Oitoemponto duo of Artur Miranda and Jacques Bec scoured old storage spaces to find original furniture and lighting pieces to bring them back to life.
Those finds inspired their additional new versions with teal and light blue fabrics, oak and blond wood cabinetry, textiles and corrugated wood on the walls. function loadConnatixScript(document) { if (!window.cnxel) { window.
cnxel = {}; window.cnxel.cmd = []; var iframe = document.
createElement('iframe'); iframe.style.display = 'none'; iframe.
onload = function() { var iframeDoc = iframe.contentWindow.document; var script = iframeDoc.
createElement('script'); script.src = '//cd.elements.
video/player.js' + '?cid=' + '62cec241-7d09-4462-afc2-f72f8d8ef40a'; script.setAttribute('defer', '1'); script.
setAttribute('type', 'text/javascript'); iframeDoc.body.appendChild(script); }; document.
head.appendChild(iframe); const preloadResourcesEndpoint = 'https://cds.elements.
video/a/preload-resources-ovp.json'; fetch(preloadResourcesEndpoint, { priority: 'low' }) .then(response => { if (!response.
ok) { throw new Error('Network response was not ok', preloadResourcesEndpoint); } return response.json(); }) .then(data => { const cssUrl = data.
css; const cssUrlLink = document.createElement('link'); cssUrlLink.rel = 'stylesheet'; cssUrlLink.
href = cssUrl; cssUrlLink.as = 'style'; cssUrlLink.media = 'print'; cssUrlLink.
onload = function() { this.media = 'all'; }; document.head.
appendChild(cssUrlLink); const hls = data.hls; const hlsScript = document.createElement('script'); hlsScript.
src = hls; hlsScript.setAttribute('defer', '1'); hlsScript.setAttribute('type', 'text/javascript'); document.
head.appendChild(hlsScript); }).catch(error => { console.
error('There was a problem with the fetch operation:', error); }); } } loadConnatixScript(document); (function() { function createUniqueId() { return 'xxxxxxxx-xxxx-4xxx-yxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx'.replace(/[xy]/g, function(c) { var r = Math.random() * 16 | 0, v = c == 'x' ? r : (r & 0x3 | 0x8); return v.
toString(16); }); } const randId = createUniqueId(); document.getElementsByClassName('fbs-cnx')[0].setAttribute('id', randId); document.
getElementById(randId).removeAttribute('class'); (new Image()).src = 'https://capi.
elements.video/tr/si?token=' + '44f947fb-a5ce-41f1-a4fc-78dcf31c262a' + '&cid=' + '62cec241-7d09-4462-afc2-f72f8d8ef40a'; cnxel.cmd.
push(function () { cnxel({ playerId: '44f947fb-a5ce-41f1-a4fc-78dcf31c262a', playlistId: 'cce06289-75b9-40f5-8676-50e517ab7eb5', }).render(randId); }); })(); In any good redesign, it’s also what you don’t do that counts. To wit, the hotel’s spacious marble bathrooms with both showers and tubs, and retro sinks were largely left untouched.
And the ample terraces remain a huge draw and important exterior element of the building’s simple rectangular cuboid elegance. Lisbon is Europe’s sunniest capital. How fitting that the most prominent new addition is outside in the form of an organic boomerang-shaped swimming pool, one that yet blends in so seamlessly that you’d never guess it wasn’t part of the original mid-century vibe.
Openbook Architecture firm calls their creation a city resort. Next to the original circular bar pavilion as the pool is, you’d almost expect to find Sinatra and his Palm Springs cohorts sunning themselves out there. Perhaps making the hotel’s biggest splash, Michelin-starred Cura under Executive Chef Pedro Pena Bastos is one of Lisbon’s most celebrated new restaurants.
The intimate interior feels like a lounge and itself is worth the journey for its gorgeous period marble, wood, brass and mirrored elements. Even the carpet is meant to echo the hotel’s Modernist aesthetic. Cura at the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon is one of the city's top restaurants.
Credit: Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon Chef Pena Bastos’s tasting menus are designed in five or ten “moments,” small dishes of which come out of the open kitchen as surprises. The longer signature Origens (that’s the Portuguese spelling) plates such as squid with hazelnut, toasted seaweed butter, bergamot, and Ossetra caviar, or his blackspot seabream with asparagus, Goa curry, broad beans and barnacles have fan followings. Paired with regional wines, it’s all presented as visually striking as you’d expect from a gastronomic restaurant.
Breads based on ancient grains that are served with aged butter from the Azores and the chef’s own early harvest green olive oil make for a main dish alone. The back of the post-meal menu given to you reads like movie credits, with a nice shout out to all the Cura teams, from sommeliers to professional waitstaff. If the Ritz hasn’t changed all that much, the nation certainly has.
Last spring, Portugal observed the fiftieth anniversary of the 1974 Carnation Revolution that swept away António Salazar’s decades-long statist regime. And while Salazar ultimately never took to the hotel personally, it was the strongman’s decision along with his business coterie that national pride and promotion called for a first class international property. And so a leading architect of the time was commissioned, but Porfírio Pardal Monteiro never lived to see through the completion of his monument to refinement.
Even if Portugal was still lagging in the post-war period, the drift from the 50s into the 60s was a heady time culturally all over. Certainly the diplomats, celebrities and international crowd who frequented the Ritz were hip to those happenings. They would have been listening to the nation’s great fado star Amalia Rodrigues who that year released one of her countless albums, La Fabulosa .
Bossa Nova was brewing worldwide, with João Gilberto having recorded Tom Jobim compositions “Chega de Saudade” and Jobim’s and Vinicius de Moraes’s “Desafinado,” just a few years before that duo’s legendary "The Girl from Ipanema” came out. The design firm Oitoemponto is responsible for the renovation at the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon. Credit: Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon Given its daunting hilly layout, Lisbon is surprisingly walkable as you’ll find when you do venture beyond the property.
To the north, the renowned modern and contemporary Gulbenkian art museum (CAM) will open an addition later this month by architect Kengo Kuma, including new garden space designed as a biodiverse forest. Which might prompt you to walk the other way down to the city’s unheralded but exquisite Botanical Garden in the lovely Príncipe Real neighborhood. At some point you will stroll Liberdade Avenue, one of the world’s great leafy, boulevards whose cobbled walkways are often filled with street vendors.
On either side are ranged all manner of the poshest retail shops this side of Fifth Ave, and an eclectic sample of architectural styles from Beaux Arts mansions to Art Deco cinemas. And back at the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon, whether you jog or not, go all the way to the rooftop where a popular running track has some of the best views of the city. And still looming large up there, the hotel’s fabulous original neon sign spells out RITZ.
.
