The One Monumental Palace

Style

Art deco extraordinaire

Setting

Imposing Aliados

Occupying a neoclassical building in the heart of Porto, The One Monumental Palace channels Thirties Paris with its dazzling art-deco design, modish brasserie and rakish cocktail lounge. Stepping inside this decadent grande dame feels akin to finding the Lost Generation – as soon as you pass through the art-nouveau entrance, you’re surrounded by Portugese marble, golden lamps and carpets embellished with bold patterns. Upstairs, you’ll bed down in rooms dressed with lacquered furniture, pastel fabrics and vast decorative-edged mirrors. Downstairs, choose from an elegant all-day brasserie or Francophile fine-dining restaurant, where choice Portugese ingredients are prepared with Gallic flair. After dark, find your poison at low-lit Bar Americain, confident that rejuvenation can be found at the luxurious spa.

Facilities

Rooms

76, including 13 suites.

Checkout

Noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

More Details

Rates at The One Monumental Palace include a breakfast of muesli and fresh fruit, French and Portuguese pastries, cold cuts and cooked-to-order items such as eggs, bacon, pancakes and chia pudding.

Also

All of the common areas are wheelchair accessible, and there are adapted rooms with larger bathrooms available on request.

Fitness Center

Free Internet Access

Laundry

Pool

On-Site Restaurant

Room Service

Spa

At the Hotel

24-hour gym, library, free WiFi throughout. In rooms: flatscreen TV; minibar; Nespresso coffee machine; tea kit; free bottled water; Eight & Bob bath products.

Our Favourite Rooms

Even the entry-level rooms at The One Monumental Palace have sumptuous art-deco furnishings and bathrooms decked in gleaming marble. If no expense is to be spared, book Le Suite Monumentale, spread over several rooms and styled like a lavish apartment. For something marginally less indulgent, try one of the Suites Audacieuses, each of which has a spacious bedroom and an adjoining lounge, both sporting polished furniture and striking prints.

Poolside

There’s an indoor pool in the spa area, surrounded by walls clad in trompe l’oeil tiles and milky white marble. The loungers look more like chaises longues than pool furniture, and the lights are shaped like oversized seashells, adding a final art-deco flourish to this decadent grotto.

Spa

The Grand Bleu Spa uses products from Ignae and Augustinus Bader. Limber up in the sauna or hammam before sampling a luxurious body scrub or glow-giving facial.

Packing Tips

Tote a novel by a Lost Generation writer – who knows, perhaps you’ll get a literary salon going among a few fellow enthusiasts in the lobby.

Also

The hotel’s interiors and layout may be new, but the café first opened its doors in 1923, making it the historic heart of this stalwart stay.

Children

All ages are welcome, but under-16s won’t be able to use the spa or pool.

Gallery

Food & Drink

Top Table

In the café, go for a table by the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Dress Code

As you like for Monumental Café; Le Monument calls for a slightly sharper silhouette.

Hotel Restaurant

Trading since 1923, the Monumental Café is the hotel’s heart and soul. Recalling the elegant brasseries of Paris, this casual all-day restaurant is flooded with light thanks to its vast windows, mirror-clad walls and floor of gleaming tiles. The kitchen is helmed by French chef Julien Montbabut, who has created a classic brasserie menu that works as well for lunch as it does for late dinners. There are plenty of Gallic classics – Bourgogne snails, foie gras marinated in port, slow-cooked chicken breast with asparagus and aged beef entrecôte, best paired with the handmade French fries. Open for dinner, fine-dining restaurant Le Monument is a dressier affair, with cloth-covered tables arranged in and around the hotel’s central atrium. Here, Montbabut serves five or seven-course set menus, uniting French cooking with Portugese ingredients like suckling pig, Ria de Aveiro eel and aged Barrosã rib-eye steak.

Hotel Bar

Echoing the clandestine cocktail bars found in prohibition-era New York, Bar Americain is a rakish lounge with plush velvet booths and a soft jazz soundtrack. There’s a fine range of gins, whiskeys and wines, but it’s the shaken and stirred offerings that steal the show.

Last Orders

Monumental Café serves from 9am to midnight; Le Monument is open for dinner from 7pm to 10.30pm Tuesday to Saturday. Bar Americain serves from 3pm to 1am (2am from Thursday to Saturday).

Room Service

The room service menu includes light bites like smoked salmon, foie gras and bísaro ham, and heartier dishes like beef tenderloin, cod and burgers. There’s also a kids’ menu.

Planes

Porto’s Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport is closest, and can be reached directly from London Gatwick and most European hubs. It takes around 20 minutes to drive to the hotel; transfers for up to two people can be arranged for €40 each way.

Trains

Trains from Lisbon, Guimarães and Aveiro arrive at Porto’s São Bento station, 2km from the hotel.

Automobiles

You won’t need a car if you’re sticking within the city – there’s a comprehensive public transport network. If you do want to drive, the Smith24 team can arrange it for you. Valet parking is €25 a day.

Worth Getting Out of Bed For

Many of Porto’s best pockets – including its historic neighbourhoods – are within walking distance, so you’ll likely want to make the most of the hotel’s enviable location. That said, it has stayed true to the spirit of Jazz Age excess by ensuring you could spend hours within its walls – not least in the historic café, an ode to the French capital that stays open until midnight. Those looking to find their inner Hemingway should make a beeline for Bar Americain, though you’re equally likely to hit your creative zenith after a few hours in the sumptuous spa.

The One Monumental sets the bar high when it comes to transportive interiors, but century-old bookshop Livreria Lello is just as capable of whisking you from one world to the next. Founded in 1906 by José and Antonio Lello, this art-nouveau landmark looks like it sprang from the page of a fanciful novel, regularly making it onto lists of the world’s most beautiful bookshops. The neo-gothic façade gives way to the cavernous shop floor, flanked by ornate shelving and capped by a stained glass ceiling. The pièce de résistance is the ornate staircase, which swoops from either side of the atrium down to the ground floor. For more feats of engineering, consider a stroll across the Dom Luís I Bridge, designed by a student of Gustav Eiffel. Arching over the River Douro, this double-deck bridge not only affords some of the best views of the city limits, it also leads to Vila Nova de Gaia, home to Graham’s Lodge. Overlooking the old city and the bridge, the lodge has been producing W&J Grahams port since 1890, and now runs tours and tastings by appointment. If you’re looking to cool off after a morning’s sightseeing, try the Marés Swimming Pool in Leça da Palmeira. Designed by Pritzker-winner architect Álvaro Siza Vieira, this set of concrete tidal pools are set into a stretch of rocky coast, uniting man-made shapes with rugged nature.

Earn or Redeem Points with World of Hyatt

This Mr & Mrs Smith hotel participates in the World of Hyatt loyalty program. As a member, you can earn and redeem points and enjoy exclusive benefits for qualifying nights. .