Torel Avantgarde opened in September 2017 at Rua da Restauração 336, on the steep hillside west of the centre between the Palácio de Cristal gardens and the Clérigos tower, with Rua Miguel Bombarda's galleries a street away. Interiors are by Isabel Sá Nogueira and Nano Design, and each of the 38 rooms, 21 suites and the Maisonette takes a name and a mood from an avant-garde figure: Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Coco Chanel, Hitchcock, Zaha Hadid. It is themed, but done with enough restraint and Portuguese craft that it holds up.
Twelve categories sit under those 60 rooms and suites, from Classic Room through Executive Room, Executive Superior Room, Executive Deluxe Room and Executive Royal Room and on through the Suite, Superior Suite, Deluxe Junior Suite, Deluxe Suite, Royal Suite and Royal Jacuzzi Suite to the Maisonette. The ladder is mostly about size and what is outside the glass. A Classic is 18 to 22 m² with a shower and no stated view. An Executive Deluxe is 27 to 31 m² with a balcony over the Douro. Public rooms are calm rather than showy: the Flower Room café looking into the garden, the Camellia Garden terrace, and the Calla Wellness & Spa at level -1 with a heated pool, sauna, sensory showers and a gym, open 10am to 8pm.
The river does the rest. Rooms in the Deluxe and Royal categories have balconies over the Douro and Gaia, and the Camellia Garden has an outdoor pool with the same view. The restaurant, Digby, runs along one wing behind floor-to-ceiling glass with the pool terrace and the river beyond, in a room Sá Nogueira lined with cork panels and draped rope. Digby is Sir Kenelm Digby, the 17th-century polymath credited with the modern wine bottle, Tenro by Digby is its aged-beef line, and the cooking is modern Portuguese from João Figueirinhas, who grew up in Vila Nova de Gaia and came via the two-star Yeatman and Euskalduna Studio. Dinner is nightly, with lunch à la carte at weekends and a set executive lunch on weekdays. Guests keep mentioning the staff, the art and the breakfast view.
The catch is geography. The hotel sits on a hill about a kilometre from Aliados and well above the river, so every walk back from the water ends with a climb, and the entry Classic rooms are the ones to avoid. Book the balcony or you have booked the wrong hotel, and know that it costs about EUR 120 a night more than a Classic, in November and February alike. Reviews are mixed on value at peak rates, some rooms run dark, and some floors creak underfoot. Winter is the cheap season and September more than doubles it. Stay here if the room is the point of the trip and the hill will not bother you.
