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The Portuguese custom of turning ancient monuments into state-run hotels - pousadas - has produced notable successes. A recent scheme near Braga has been carried out with exemplary sensitivity.
HOTEL CONVERSION FROM MONASTERY, SANTA MARIA DO BOURO, BRAGO, PORTUGAL ARCHITECT EDUARDO SOUTO DE MOURA
In Portugal, state-sponsored schemes to revitalize the country's most romantic monuments, some abandoned and ruined, some just too large for private habitation, have been very successful. The most recent of these for state-run hotels have incorporated the ruins of ancient monasteries. The creation by Eduardo Souto de Moura of a hotel out of the ruined monastery of Santa Maria do Bouro near Braga in the mountainous north-west province of Minho must serve as the exemplar. Souto de Moura was an inspired appointment; his appreciation of the intrinsic nature of materials and of the character of place is almost mystical. This is evident most recently in his design of a stone house in Moledo that, facing the sea, streams long and low across a rocky hill above the town of Caminha. Unmistakably a modern insertion into the landscape, it yet is an organic element of it, with the structure and grain of traditional stone embankments. Here and at Santa Maria do Bouro, rigour and intelligence ensure that the picturesque is the consequence not the aim of design.
Minho is comparatively rainy and Santa Maria do Bouro on the top of a small hill rises out of lushly...