The Press Kit

Casa do Sol sits in Infesta, Celorico de Basto — a quiet village in the green folds of the Minho, in the historic Vinho Verde wine region. The building it occupies was originally constructed in the mid-1940s as a working agricultural barn. For most of the twentieth century it sheltered animals and stored the harvest through long Minho winters.

The barn was acquired in 2022 with one brief: bring it back to life without erasing what it had been. The granite walls were repointed by hand. The cobbled courtyard was restored using stones already on the land. The volumes were opened up; large windows were cut to frame the valley and the Serra do Marão beyond.

The renovation was completed in 2023 and the villa opened to guests later the same year. Today, what was once a working barn is a 700 m² private retreat: three en-suite bedrooms, an open-plan living and dining room around a granite fireplace, and an outdoor courtyard with a private pool and Nordic sauna.

The building is older than it looks. The light still moves the way it always has — across the courtyard in the morning, over the pool by mid-afternoon, into the sauna at dusk. The barn is gone, but the building still keeps the same hours.