Past a pedestrian street in the historic part of Porto, through a maze of tables overflowing with diners soaking up the sun, a pair of gleaming terraced mansions sit side by side. Enter through a dark-green door and follow the mysterious, cavernous corridor into a serenely inviting room. It has meticulously restored granite arches, cream bouclé couches, and a wooden cabinet displaying exactly what’s needed after the heat and bustle of the town square: Madeira cake and coffee.
This is the Largo’s answer to a lobby, an undisturbed space that’s refreshingly un-lobby-like. The intention was to create an environment that feels more like a living room, where guests would be inclined to linger. “We wanted it to be simple, to cut away what you don’t use,” says cofounder Per Enevoldsen.
After making his fortune with the billion-dollar Danish jewelry brand Pandora, Enevoldsen, along with his friend and former colleague Steen Bock, deliberated a new project to bide idle time. One night, over whiskey and cigars, they jotted down mutual interests: wine, gastronomy, heritage buildings. A month later they found themselves at an intimate seven-suite property on Lake Como run by passionate owners. An idea sparked. Though neither was a hotelier, they’d traveled extensively, checking into countless accommodations around the world. “A hotel has two parts: the hotelier and the guest,” Enevoldsen notes. “We’ve had a lot of guest experience. We knew a lot of what we didn’t want.”
The hotel’s central staircase.
Courtesy of The Largo
Unsure of the right location, they boarded Enevoldsen’s plane and crisscrossed the globe from Santorini to Miami to London. At the time, Porto wasn’t on their radar. “Neither of us had ever been,” says Enevoldsen. Unsurprising, as Portugal’s second-largest city was long considered a stopover to the famed Douro Valley, home of port wine. But no longer: Overnight stays shot up nearly 30 percent from 2019 to 2023, and United Airlines recently launched a second daily direct flight from Newark.
A mutual hotelier friend clued the pair in to the city’s promise, and they immediately planned a trip, spending hours walking the cobblestone streets until they stumbled upon a dilapidated heritage building on Largo de São Domingos. “Our gut feeling was that the place really had potential,” says Bock, and the fact that Porto wasn’t considered a high-end destination was actually a plus. They wanted to invest somewhere a little more untapped, where they could offer travelers experiences that would reveal an overlooked city in fresh, new ways. Today, that means city walks with architects and cruises down the Douro River with a winemaker in the hotel’s private motor yacht. “The reciprocity with the city is very important,” Bock says.
Guests can use the property’s private motoryacht, a Riva 63 Virtus.
Courtesy of The Largo
They restored the mansion, acquiring a total of five neighboring heritage buildings. Portuguese architect Frederico Valsassina was tasked with the near-impossible: connecting these edifices via tunnels, elevators, and staircases to create a cohesive, 18-key, multilevel hotel.
Though the structure of the facades remains largely unchanged, those who knew them before would hardly recognize the mansions today. Space Copenhagen took charge of the interiors, introducing soft, minimalist decor for the 14 suites and working closely with local artisans specializing in metal, stone, tiling, and millwork. For food and beverage, including restaurants Cozinha das Flores and Flôr (a sister project in an adjacent building), Enevoldsen and Bock tapped Lisbon-born chef Nuno Mendes, previously of London’s Chiltern Firehouse, who riffs on facets of traditional Portuguese cuisine. Be sure to try his savory spin on the local pastéis de nata tart, made from turnip and topped with caviar, a decadent and unexpectedly opulent take on an otherwise humble treasure—not, come to think of it, unlike the Largo itself.
