Casa Velha do Palheiro is a country-house hotel of 37 rooms and suites on the Palheiro estate, about 500 metres up the hillside east of Funchal. The house began as a hunting lodge, built in 1804 by João José Xavier de Carvalhal, later the first Count of Carvalhal, who laid out the estate from about 1801 and planted it with specimen trees brought in by sailing ship. The Blandy family bought Palheiro in 1885, and in 1901 King Carlos I and Queen Amélia were entertained to a picnic on the front lawn, followed by a game of tennis. The old house stood empty for decades until the Blandys restored it from 1995. It opened as a hotel in 1997 and is a member of Relais & Châteaux.
Ten of the rooms are in the old house: three Junior Suites of 52 m², named after the Count, King Carlos and John Burden Blandy, and the Double Main House rooms, which keep a period feel but are small, from 12 to 23 m². The Garden Wing of 1997 has 28 m² doubles with walk-in showers, renovated in 2023 and looking over the gardens. The two-storey Golf Wing of 1999 holds the 32 m² doubles with a bath and separate shower, and the 57 m² Senior Suites with separate sitting rooms, named after the nineteenth-century painters of Madeira Frank Dillon and Andrew Pickens. Breakfast is included in the standard rates.
What you book it for is the estate. The Palheiro Gardens are next door, with direct access from the grounds to their tea house, and Palheiro Golf, an 18-hole, par 72 course by Cabell B. Robinson among pines, borders the hotel. A nature trail through the estate's 150 hectares, partly replanted with native til and laurel, leads to the golf clubhouse and the Vista Balancal restaurant above Funchal Bay. At home there is a tiled garden pool of 17 by 8 metres with a bar, an indoor spa pool heated to 27 to 30°C with Jacuzzi beds, yoga in the garden pavilion, a tennis court and dinner at Oxalis, which the MICHELIN Guide lists, where Gonçalo Bita Bota cooks with island produce. Dogs are welcome on the trails.
The trade is distance and height. The Sé is 18 minutes by car off-peak but about 70 minutes on foot, much of it steep, so evenings in town mean a taxi each way, and the estate, about 500 metres up, is cooler than the seafront, with January days averaging about 16°C. There is no sea to swim in within walking distance. For couples and golfers who want gardens, a good dinner and quiet 20 minutes from the airport, it is the calm choice above the city.
