São Lourenço do Barrocal

Barrocal has been in the same family for eight generations. What was a self-contained farming hamlet, with its own cottages, stables, school and chapel, was left largely empty for decades before the current owner spent years restoring it under the architect Eduardo Souto de Moura. The result is deliberately plain: whitewashed walls, cork and chestnut, and almost nothing that draws attention to itself.

The estate runs to 780 hectares of cork oak, olive groves, vineyards and pasture, scattered with prehistoric standing stones. Rooms and cottages are spread through the old farm buildings, and there is a winery producing the estate's own Alentejo wines, a spa in the former stables, and a kitchen that cooks close to what the land produces.

Above it all sits Monsaraz, a walled medieval village on a hilltop with views across the Alqueva lake into Spain. This is one of the darkest skies in Europe, certified for astrotourism, which makes the estate's stargazing more than an afterthought.