For at least a decade, Portugal has been described as Europe's best-kept secret, though at this point that is no longer accurate. Lisbon and Porto are genuinely discovered, and the Algarve coast has been a destination for European sun seekers for thirty years. But the version of Portugal that most American travelers experience is still a fraction of what the country actually offers, and the version that luxury travelers can now access is genuinely extraordinary. The hotel infrastructure has caught up with the landscape. The restaurant scene has found its own confident voice. The wine is exceptional and still absurdly underpriced by any international standard. Portugal is not a secret anymore, but it is still, for the traveler who goes beyond the obvious, one of the most rewarding countries in Europe.
What changed is primarily the hotels. A decade ago, Portugal lacked the high-end accommodation infrastructure to support a true luxury itinerary. Today, the Alentejo region alone (the vast, golden interior between Lisbon and the Algarve) has half a dozen properties that would anchor a best-in-class itinerary in any European country. The Douro Valley wine country now has intimate hotel properties of genuine distinction. The Comporta coast south of Lisbon, a stretch of Atlantic shoreline that is the closest thing Europe has to the Hamptons, has developed a small collection of design-forward properties that are among the most stylish places to stay anywhere on the continent.
Lisbon: Still Worth Your Time
Lisbon is one of the great European cities, and it rewards repeat visits more than most. The neighborhoods, Alfama, Mouraria, Príncipe Real, LX Factory, are genuinely distinct in character, and the city is compact enough that you can walk between most of them in a morning. The food scene has transformed almost completely in the last ten years: the restaurants that have made international attention are genuinely excellent, but the more important development is the emergence of a generation of young Portuguese chefs who are cooking food that is local and seasonal and personal rather than derivative. Belcanto in Lisbon holds two Michelin stars and consistently ranks among the finest restaurants in Europe. The Natural Wine Bar ecosystem in Príncipe Real is among the most thoughtful and approachable in any European city.
Sintra, forty minutes by train from Lisbon, is easy to visit and easy to mishandle. The palace at Pena, sitting on a rocky crag above the town, is one of the most extraordinary pieces of nineteenth-century romantic architecture in Europe. Arrive before ten in the morning in summer, and the experience is entirely different from arriving at noon. The Serra de Sintra forest below the palaces is a ravine of moss-covered stone and mist that feels like a fairy tale setting, and most visitors never enter it. I always build a full day in Sintra into a Lisbon itinerary and specify exactly which sequence of visits produces the best experience.
The Alentejo
The Alentejo is the region I'm most likely to recommend to clients who have already been to Lisbon and Porto and want to go deeper into Portugal. It is a vast, quiet landscape of cork oak forests, marble villages, and ancient Roman ruins, with a pace of life and a quality of light, golden and unhurried, that is unlike anything in the more visited parts of the country. Évora, the region's principal city, has a Roman temple in the town center that is so well preserved it almost looks fictional, a cathedral that dates to the twelfth century, and a restaurant and wine culture that is deeply local in a way that Lisbon's has grown beyond.
The wine estates of the Alentejo have become some of the most exceptional accommodation experiences in Portugal. Herdade do Esporão, Herdade da Malhadinha Nova, and Herdade dos Grous all offer the combination of excellent wine production, outstanding food, and accommodation of genuine quality that is difficult to find anywhere else in Europe at comparable prices. Spending two or three nights on one of these estates, eating exclusively local produce, drinking wines produced on the property, walking through the cork oak forest at dusk, is the kind of experience that clients describe for years afterward.
"Portugal has always had exceptional raw material: the landscape, the food, the wine, the culture. What it now has is the accommodation infrastructure to support a genuinely luxury experience. The combination is irresistible."
The Douro Valley
The Douro Valley, three hours east of Porto in the dramatic river gorge that produces Port wine and an increasingly impressive range of still table wines, is one of Europe's most beautiful wine regions. It's comparable to Burgundy in its terroir complexity and Bordeaux in the scale of its ambition, but with a wildness and verticality that neither French region can match. The vineyards are terraced on schist slopes that descend directly to the river at angles that make mechanized viticulture impossible, and the result is wine that still tastes of the effort required to grow it.
The best way to experience the Douro is by boat. The traditional rabelo boats that once transported Port from the valley to Porto were replaced by modern tourist vessels decades ago, and a river journey from Régua to Pinhão, between the high terrace walls with their ancient quinta names painted in white lettering, is one of the most beautiful ninety minutes available in any European wine region. The Vintage House in Pinhão and the Six Senses Douro Valley, both exceptional properties with direct access to the river and the vineyards, have made extended stays in the valley possible in a way that day-tripping from Porto never quite captured.
The Comporta Coast
Comporta and the Tróia Peninsula south of Setúbal represent a version of the Portuguese Atlantic coast that almost no American traveler has encountered. The beaches are extraordinary: wide, white, backed by fragrant pine forests rather than development. The village of Comporta itself, with its rice paddies and cork trees and small number of design-conscious restaurants and boutiques, has the feeling of somewhere genuinely rare, a beautiful place that has maintained its character even as its reputation has grown. Sublime Comporta, the region's standout property, is built in the local architectural vernacular and set in the cork forest behind the beach in a way that feels entirely of its landscape. For clients seeking serious natural beauty and understated luxury without a crowd, Comporta delivers something that almost nowhere else in Europe can match.
