São Lourenço do Barrocal

The granite boulders scattered across this part of the Alentejo are called barrocais, and they gave the estate its name. São Lourenço do Barrocal grew through the 19th century into a monte, a self-contained farming village with workshops, a schoolroom, a bakery and a bullring, supporting as many as fifty families. It has belonged to the same family for over two hundred years.

By the late 20th century it was derelict. José António Uva, the eighth generation, spent fourteen years bringing it back, and invited Eduardo Souto de Moura, who won the Pritzker Prize in 2011, to oversee the work. Souto de Moura's position was that heritage survives only by being used, even where it shows damage, because daily life is what turns old architecture into something natural rather than preserved.

The result is deliberately unspectacular. The old olive press became the bar. The stables became the restaurant. Farm workers' rooms became bedrooms. Very little was demolished and not much was added. There are 40 places to stay in total: 22 rooms, two suites and 16 cottages of one to three bedrooms, all with terracotta floors, whitewashed walls and vaulted ceilings. The tiles underfoot, 350,000 of them, were fired at a pottery in nearby Corval, and the interiors by AnahoryAlmeida use wool, wood and ceramics made in the surrounding region.

The estate still farms. There is a winery, vineyards, olive groves and cork oaks across 780 hectares, two restaurants working from the land, a farm shop, stables with horses, a gym, a children's playroom and two outdoor pools, one of them with a four-metre granite boulder standing in it. The spa runs along a corridor of rooms that once housed seasonal workers at the olive and grape harvests, and uses Susanne Kaufmann products.

Monsaraz, the fortified medieval village on the hill, is five minutes away. Lake Alqueva is close, and the whole area falls inside the Alqueva Dark Sky Reserve, which on a clear night is reason enough to stay.

Lisbon is around two and a half hours by car, Seville about three, and the Spanish border ten kilometres off. It holds one Michelin Key and belongs to Leading Hotels of the World.