Hotel Minho

It’s safe to say something big is officially happening in the Portuguese hospitality world. The twenty-teens (if that’s what we end up calling them) will be remembered (around here, at least) as the decade when everywhere you looked, all up and down the length of Portugal, a fabulously stylish modern minimalist boutique hotel seemed to be sprouting up out of nothing. Spanish-style building boom? Newfound taste for modernist architecture? Whatever it is, if it results in hotels like Viana do Castelo’s Hotel Minho, we’ll take it.

This sort of aesthetic always has people reaching for Japanese comparisons, and with its geometric forms, low-profile nature-hugging construction, and generous use of unpainted wood, the parallels are easy to see. The public areas are spare to the extreme, their emptiness going a long way toward creating the resort’s desired tranquility. And in this context the rooms are slightly surprising, a bit cozier, a bit more decorated than the rest of the hotel might lead you to expect — whatever else it is, this is no longer the decade of the blank white hotel room. Art is a presence in all rooms, and the suites take individual artists as their inspiration, from Dalí to Warhol.

A full-service spa is among the main attractions, as are a restaurant specializing in the local Alto Minho fare and a wine bar with vinhos verdes for miles. And you’ll want to get out a bit. Vila Nova de Cerveira is a village that’s as historic as the Hotel Minho is modern, and you’re surrounded by the Alto Minho mountain landscape as well as the River Minho, not to mention Galicia, just on the other side.