Review: Palácio Príncipe Real

Indian Runner ducks are not perhaps the bird that you most readily associate with Lisbon’s leafy Príncipe Real, where soaring palm trees play hide and seek with faded palaces, but at this perfectly pink Palácio, they are everywhere. There are one or two sitting on the counter in the appropriately named Duck Bar, another one embossed in gold on your leather key card holder and even some wrought in the iron railings of the large balconies. “We chose them as our logo as they come from Asia like us,” explains British owners Miles and Gail Curley, who did a stint in Singapore before settling in Madrid for many years. It was from there that on a visit to Lisbon they fell in love with this 19th-century palace and decided to swap law for hospitality.

Gail embraced the challenge of restoring and redecorating 28 bedrooms drawing on her style. Due respect is paid to the palace’s Portuguese heritage with ancient blue and white tiles preserved and even the colourful Moorish stucco work ceiling which adorns one of the bedrooms. But over these are laid English touches from the huge stand-alone bathtubs from Drummonds to the Dyson hairdryers. Bathrooms are clad in the barley-coloured local limestone with heated floors and Byredo amenities. Bedrooms come with complimentary minibars (try the ginger health shots), Nespresso machines and locally sourced pink pepper candles. But everywhere there is an overarching generosity – of space, of Gail and Mile’s time (Miles folded his tall frame into his old Renault 4 run around and drove me to the station when my Uber didn’t materialise), and a warm desire to please. Breakfast in the beautiful gardens, in the shade of the Jacaranda tree on poached egg on toasted sourdough before a lazy day by the huge swimming pool under a cloudless Lisbon sky.