Houses, places and the Portuguese property market, written by us

A crown, an eagle and the date 1760: the story of the Mellos Josés Palace in Elvas, Portugal, and of the family of soldiers whose arms it carries.

He spent his life designing cities. In 1971 he drew a house on a ridge above the Castelo de Bode reservoir — and it has never been sold.

In 1905 the owner of the Constância tile factory built on Rua das Janelas Verdes and dressed it in his own ceramics. The story of an Art Nouveau showcase.

On Lisbon's Avenida da República, an architect trained in John Pawson's studio spent four years taking an apartment back to its essentials, in light, wood and lioz stone.

From the Avenidas Novas to Alvalade, Lisbon's apartment buildings of 1930 to 1960: Art Deco, Português Suave, modernism, and what to check before buying.

Between the dunes and the pines near Santa Cruz, a hotel built from a dream, and a four-bedroom villa that carries its architecture home.

National monuments, public and municipal interest: what a heritage classification changes when you buy a listed building in Portugal, from pre-emption to tax.

Granite, schist, lime and timber, and the licensing rules revised in 2026: what to check before renovating a house in Portugal, from the survey to the tax side.

Five centuries of Portuguese tiles, from the Moorish patterns of Sintra to the Lisbon Metro: how to read an azulejo, date it and look after it at home.

The Count of Farrobo gave Lisbon its wildest parties. In Águeda, his descendants' quinta keeps a tiled verse that praises a quieter happiness.

Between the Gulbenkian gardens and the new park at Praça de Espanha, the Mateus brothers closed a long-empty gap in a Lisbon avenue with a building wrapped in a light metal skin.

Stone, river pebbles, red clay and thatch: Azinheira, a hamlet near Castelo Branco, Portugal, protected since 2004 and empty of people today.

Opened in 1858 with a play by Almeida Garrett, Portalegre's first theatre heard José Régio's students and, by local accounts, Amélia Rey Colaço's last bow.

In Campeã, high on the Marão above Vila Real, a granite house stands beside the oldest road in the mountains: a road of Romans, pilgrims, muleteers and armies.

A date carved on a chimney, a square named after the Rojão, a liberal of 1832 and a republican mayor of 1910: the story of a town house in Reguengos de Monsaraz.

Bagatelle, Seville, Montjuïc, Havana, Lisbon: the life of Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier, and the gardens of the Mistress's Palace in Elvas, where his work survives.

A banker from Badajoz, a Spanish republican, his widow and a legend about Alfonso XIII: the history of Villa Justa in Elvas, today the Mistress's Palace.

From a workshop in Pau in 1860 to the Banco de España and the Casino Gran Vía: the story of Maumejean stained glass, and the doors and skylight at the Mistress's Palace in Elvas.

Above the Tâmega, a monastery founded around the year 1000 by a warrior and a bishop holds the tombs and legends of the family that raised Portugal's first king.

In 1834 the canons left Vila Boa do Bispo and the monastery became a quinta. Below it, an old granite quarry on the Tâmega has become a lake.

For eight centuries, Augustinian canons lived around a granite cloister above the Tâmega. In the seventeenth century they turned their Romanesque house into a Baroque one.

A granite gate dated 1771, a harvest painted in tile and a textile industrialist of the Ave valley: the story of Quinta do Quintão, in Santo Tirso.

In the Alto Alentejo town of Nisa, a stately house on Rua Dr. Manuel Arriaga is the seat of the women who keep the town's embroidery alive.

A royal estate of 1312, a botanist's park, a house of tiles and an Irish saint: Paço do Lumiar is a village of quintas inside Lisbon.