Alentejo Marmoris Hotel & Spa

It seems there’s no part of Portugal that’s left out of the current travel boom. Save a spot on your itinerary for Vila Viçosa, near the Spanish border in the Alentejo region, to the east of Evora. Here you’ll find the Alentejo Marmòris Hotel & Spa, where two distinctive elements combine to create a one-of-a-kind hotel. The first is the architect Miguel Câncio Martins, who’s best known for the Buddha-Bar in Paris. And the second is the material: Vila Viçosa is known for its marble, and the family that owns the Marmòris has been in the business for generations.

So it’s no surprise that the hotel’s interiors make liberal, and often unconventional, use of the richly figured stone. The rooms and suites are simple and elegant, with a touch of Art Deco and a faint Moorish influence — which is brought to the fore in the top-of-the-line Arabic Suite — and the bathrooms are as extravagant as you’d expect from a monument to marble. The Stone Spa, fashioned from an old quarry cave, offers a particularly memorable experience, and the restaurant, which serves modern interpretations of the traditional cuisine of Alentejo, is centered around a massive table made from a single block of marble found on site.