Vila Monte

Hotel description

The Algarve, Portugal’s southernmost province, is a destination seemingly ready-made for tourism. It’s covered with sandy beaches and sunshine, and just as places like New Zealand get comic mileage out of their ratios of sheep per capita, the Algarve seemingly has at least one hole of golf for every native family. Of course there are plenty of beach resorts, golf clubs, big hotels — and then there are escapes like the much smaller Vila Monte.

Originally a manor house, it’s now a hotel encompassing a handful of small villas in Andalusian and Moorish styles: the original Villa Indigo, the courtyard-style Riad, the citrus-grove Orangerie. Each one is split into several rooms or suites, mixing contemporary luxuries with traditional aesthetics.

There are some big-resort amenities here, from the Kasbah Spa to the golf club, where a resident pro will help you with your short game on the 3-hole pitch-and-putt course (and help book tee times at one of the thirty 18-hole courses nearby). But what’s most remarkable here is the private-retreat atmosphere — dine on the terrace of the Orangerie, with a menu based on local Algarvian produce, many of them grown organically on the Vila Monte’s estate.