Hilton Building New Hotel on Rua das Janelas Verdes

25 November 2018

In 2019, the Curio hotel brand will open its doors in Lisbon after an unprecedented rehabilitation.

The rehabilitation project will involve interventions on three different streets in Lisbon’s historic centre, where a Curio-branded hotel, belonging to the Hilton group, will open its doors in December 2019. Construction began in 2017 on Rua das Janelas Verdes, which houses the future hotel’s largest surface area. The rest extends to Travessa Dom Brás and Rua do Olival.

“It is the right moment and the perfect place to open the first Curio Collection Hotel in Portugal. The tourism industry is rapidly growing in the country, and Lisbon is at the heart of this growth. The city is being recognised for its unique cultural heritage, in addition to its beautiful beaches,” said Patrick Fitzgibbon, Hilton’s senior vice president of development for EMEA, Europe, the Middle East and Africa).

The new boutique hotel will have 67 rooms, a fitness centre and a restaurant and bar, open to both guests and the general public.

The fourth hotel in Portugal

Executives at the Hilton group guarantee that the Curio de Lisboa will be “one of the best new hotels in the city,” living up to its “enviable location next to the National Museum of Ancient Art, many embassies and National Assembly, and a few streets away from the historic neighbourhoods of Chiado and Baixa.”

Curio is a part of the Hilton collection, characterised by hotels with “character and personality” which maintain independent ownership and naming. The Lisbon project is the result of a franchise agreement between the multinational hotel group and Goldenflamingo Ltda, which owns the property. The new hotel will be called Emerald House Lisbon. In total, Hilton has about 60 Curio-branded hotels, all of which were “handpicked,” and each one is unique. Noting that the Lisbon project involves a “multi-million-euro” rehabilitation, executives at the Hilton group declined to cite their exact investment.

According to Saraiva + Associados, the architectural studio responsible for the rehabilitation, the project involved “two separate interventions, linked together – on the one hand, the rehabilitation and  interior remodelling of the existing building, and the other, the construction of a new structure.” The two buildings “constitute an architectural ensemble that will assert itself as a whole, functionally unified and speaking as one,” in a concept based on the “re-reading of formal and traditional elements that characterise this area of Lisbon” alongside a “contemporary approach” visible in the use of materials such as tiles or lioz marble.

The Emerald House will open in Lisbon at the end of next year and will be Hilton’s fourth hotel in Portugal, alongside two hotels in the Algarve – the Conrad in Quinta do Lago and the Hilton in Vilamoura – and the DoubleTree Fontana Park in Lisbon.

Original Story: Jornal Expresso – Conceição Antunes

Photo: D.R.

Translation: Richard Turner