The World of Hospitality Issue 38 2020 | Page 5

MONUMENTAL PALACE HOTEL THE WORLD OF HOSPITALITY 5 Completely redesigned, the transformation of the building into a grand luxury hotel has required redefining all volumes to create a central gourmet restaurant, coupled with a breakfast room upstairs while unfolds the cafe skillfully transformed into a brasserie. The luxury of the details and ornaments that run through each space helps to bring this reinvention to life. From the library, the TV room and the spa that seems to have been added in the 70s, restaurants can still host an orchestra and help maintain this legend of Porto’s great music cafes. Who better than the duo OITOEMPONTO to want to contribute to restore Porto’s hospitality and give back all its letters of nobility to this historical building and to make the city of Porto shine. Them who travel the world in the best conditions, always come back with the same pleasure in their fief, have doubled their intelligence and ability to make Monumental Porto the hotel of reference of their city by succeeding a very daring exercise of style, a successful work of re-enchantment with the panache and ease that characterize them.For decades these cafes have become very important in Porto, first becoming an economic capital and then a student city whose youngsters, who had no heating at home, spent a good part of the day in these cafes to study and discuss while staying warm. Furthermore, it’s also where people dance because each café has its own orchestra to attract, entertain and keep customer’s loyalty. After the Second World War, the building also hosts a first class pension with various dining rooms before being converted into an office building and then occupied by a car dealer on the ground floor before collapsing and falling into for ten years, until it was bought to become the reference hotel in Porto.