Hotel Figueira Lisboa

The hotel couldn't decide between being charming or beautiful, so it decided to be both (beautiful + boutique = beautique). Nini Andrade da Silva is behind its brave and completely outside-the-box concept. The 50 rooms pay tribute to nature in panels with leaves, figs or tree bark, but green is all over. The hotel layout went against the grain and put the spa on its top floor, disregarding the obvious move – an open-air rooftop bar. But there are plenty of rooftops in Lisbon; a panoramic spa is more unusual and valuable. Figu's Restaurant will remind you of an abandoned city in the forest, for reasons good and bad. The good reasons have to do with the decoration, evocative of tree bark with plants wrapped around the pillars and futuristic and austere furniture; the bad have to do with the absence of people at dinnertime. The outdoors tables have plenty of patrons during the day, but in the evening the crowd is sparse.