Palácio de Tavira

Palácio de Tavira is finished in lime and clay, chosen, the hotel says, for the way they age, and the house has been testing them since the 18th century. The Tavares family built it over that century and the next as one of Tavira's great noble residences, a place for receptions and political debates among the town's leading figures, on a square a few minutes' walk from the Roman bridge. The restoration kept the thick whitewashed walls, the high ceilings and, in the Palácio rooms, the original windows. Ask for the Junior Suite, up in the attic, with the town spread out below it. The Medina, a newly built wing, pays homage to the Moorish side of Tavira, its rooms set round patios and a garden courtyard. Some have a private terrace with a bronze shower on it and, after all that thick wall, nothing overhead but sky.

Recommended for grown-ups who want a town to wander and do not mind a boat to the beach. The sand is on the Ilha de Tavira, a sandbar off the coast, and the ferry leaves from the quayside in summer and from Quatro Águas the rest of the year. Nearer at hand, the roof has twin plunge pools and a sun deck above the terracotta and the domes, with the sea at the far end of the view, as close as it comes without the boat. Lunch at Mirsal is under the citrus trees, from a kitchen led by Fábio Domingues that cooks from the Algarve around it: octopus à lagareiro, and lamb with apricot and almond. Bar da Lua mixes its cocktails with local fruit and herbs and is open to the night sky, as a bar named after the moon should be.