The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Go underground for a silent slumber
In Portugal’s Alentejo, Mary Lussiana checks in at Casa na Terra – a subterranean house that is balm for the soul
‘As I go down into the house,” Elsa told me, “it feels as though I am being enfolded in an embrace, but when I arrive at the terrace on the opposite side I have this sense of freedom as the landscape opens out in front of me.” Elsa was busy preparing the traditional Alentejan fish soup, sopa de cação, as we talked, aromas of garlic and coriander filling the kitchen as she did so. Her words echoed almost exactly what I felt upon walking through the house – save for the element of surprise – for I had presumed that a house built underground would trigger my claustrophobia. No doubt it is testament to the skill of its owner and creator, acclaimed architect Manuel Aires Mateus, that I felt captivated rather than captured.
The three-bedroom Casa na Terra (“house in the land”) joined the small, thoughtful collection that makes up the Silent Living portfolio of houses and hotels, in time for the intense summer heat that turns the Alentejo region into a palette of parched browns. That sunbaked, cracked landscape is somewhat alleviated here by the Alqueva, the largest man-made lake in Europe, one of whose arms shimmers centre-stage in the view framed by the curved concrete canopy where the house emerges into the light. By next spring, the untamed meadows it looks on to will be a riot of wild yellow flowers with a scattering of red and orange poppies, and the flat roof of the house, level with the ground, will be a thatch of lush green grass.
Joao Rodrigues chose the name Silent Living for his company by asking his staff to jot down the words uttered when guests first walked through the doors of his existing four properties.
“After eight months we collated the results. ‘Silent’ came top of the list but the others such as ‘simplicity’, ‘nature’, ‘home from home’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘family’ and ‘local’ became ingredients in a recipe that will now be used for future projects,” he says.
Although Joao didn’t know that Casa na Terra would become part of his portfolio at that stage, it couldn’t fit better under the title of “silent”. For deep in the earth, in a region where there are probably more storks than people, where the internet hasn’t quite penetrated many villages and time definitely stands still, the silence, almost contemplative in feel, is luxuriously immersive.
The other four properties were also designed by Manuel Aires Mateus. As they were all pre-existing buildings, their starting point was different but each one tunes in to its natural surroundings. There is Cabanas no Rio, two restored old wooden fishermen’s huts which stand facing the infinite horizon of the Sado Estuary.
There is Casas na Areia, set among sand dunes and rice fields, which Aires Mateus exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2010 and which became the starting point for the collection. Four bedrooms are split across two former fishermen’s houses, traditionally thatched, with a kitchen and sitting room in the third house created in the vernacular Comporta style of reeds, wood and thatch, with the modern twist of a heated floor under the sand.
Casa no Tempo, the old family house with thick, white-washed walls, celebrates the nature-writ-large ethos of the Alentejo, standing proud in its wide open landscape, punctuated by ancient olives and oak groves, while Lisbon’s Santa Clara 1728, a six-bedroom hotel, immaculately restores a piece of the capital’s cultural heritage.
Casa na Terra adds another piece to the growing jigsaw. Originally the house was a commission from one of Aires Mateus’s clients, but before it was finished the crisis of 2008 hit Portugal and the client pulled out. The concrete structure, already inserted into the ground, was abandoned, soon to be claimed back by the plants and shrubs that it had pushed aside, creating an atmospheric ruin which reminded Aires Mateus of his favourite type of architecture – ancient Roman. It was Joao who pushed him to finish it, many years later, agreeing to look after it when he had done so. So Manuel returned to the project, inspired by the feeling of timelessness that the building evoked in him.
You enter via a narrow flight of stairs which goes steeply down into the earth, bringing you into a hall with three bedrooms radiating off it. It is minimalist in feel, neutral in colour, with expanses of natural wood and smooth concrete underfoot. Each bedroom has its own shower room with a huge rain shower and earthenware pots of Molton Brown toiletries.
The bedrooms are illuminated by two small, circular atriums, or light wells. These are open to the sky and clad in dazzling white tiles to reflect the light that pours down into them from above. Glass doors, shuttered at night, allow the light to flood into the bedrooms. The sitting room, equipped with a log fire for the cold Alentejan nights, opens out under the concrete canopy which stretches across the cobbled terrace and leads into the long kitchen. Wicker chairs are set out, from which you can enjoy both the sunset and the sunrise – so wide is the sweep of view.
Elsa comes every morning to cook up a feast for breakfast: cinnamondusted porridge, scrambled eggs and mushrooms, freshly squeezed orange juice, local cheeses and hams, fruits and yogurts. On request she can, as she did for us, prepare something traditional for dinner. A warm cake will be waiting for you upon arrival.
The Alentejo makes for the perfect road trip with small, design-centric hotels scattered across it. At Casa na Terra, you are five minutes away by car from the medieval town of Monsaraz. A tiny, white-washed jewel of a place, encircled by a town wall, it sits high up on a hill, its skyline dominated by church spires and castle turrets.
At night, you have the stars to look up at, for Alqueva was the world’s first “starlight tourism” destination. The atmospheric conditions and low light pollution create a mesmerising sky.
With the frenzy of travel abated, big hotels empty and many people in search of a more meaningful, quieter approach to life, Silent Living might just be the right way forward. We have all found solace in nature this year and realised just how much families matter. Those are just two of the ingredients in what is a very magical mix.