Heritage Hotel Transformed into an Opulent Lisbon Apartment by ESQVTA.

“Any kind of intervention in this space should not interfere with the existing one,” says Vitor Almeida, principal architect at ESQVTA. “More than proposing, it was necessary to omit. More than designing, it was necessary to recover and integrate. More than composing, it was necessary to be simple and silent with rigour in response to new needs.” 

This opulent heritage apartment is located in a building once known as Hotêl Particulier in Lisbon, Portugal. The interior occupies the 1st floor where hotel rooms once were, now transformed into an eleven-room residence. Previously the hotel’s social floor, almost all the walls and ceilings are decorated with original, intricate wall murals.

“When transformed into an individual fraction of housing, the apartment was occupied by Pedro Espirito Santo, known as the host of the best parties and dinners in Lisbon,” says Almeida. These eleven arresting rooms served the purpose perfectly at the time.

In 2019, the apartment acquired a new owner, this tie with a family. “The intervention program was based on the maintenance, conservation and restoration of all the architectural heritage of the property, but adapting it to family needs,” explains Almeida who adds – “from one bathroom, we now have six independent bathrooms.” 

In order to keep the new interventions “silent enough not to be noticed”, ESQVTA chose a selection of timeless design pieces – “as if from the height of 18th-century art we could in the same space suddenly travel to what is best produced in 21st-century design,” says Almeida.

“History is written today in a different language. With other objects, and arguments even if the principle remains present: a house to live and be lived in,” concludes Almeida.

[Photography by Ricardo Oliveira Alves.]