Breakfast · 8 October 2026
The bread arrives at ten to seven
How a baker named Albano, a van with a bad clutch and a woman called Marta decide what you eat for breakfast at Casa Vellum.
Alfama, Lisboa · Sixteen rooms
A house in Alfama, with the river at the end of the street.
Casa Vellum is a sixteen-room hotel in a restored townhouse from the 1760s. Breakfast is baked at the bottom of the lane, the terrace faces the river, and someone will know your name by the second morning.
The house
Old walls, a staircase of blue tiles, and a roof you are allowed on.
Inês and Tomás Vellum bought the house in 2019, when it was eleven flats and a roofed-over courtyard. It took two years to take it back to what it was: vaulted ceilings, pine floors with the nail holes left in, a staircase tiled in the 1780s and a lift tucked into the old stairwell.
There are sixteen rooms in six kinds, and no two feel the same. Some face the river. Some face the courtyard and its fountain. The smallest is twenty square metres, and the largest is an apartment with its own kitchen.
Downstairs is the breakfast room, which becomes a wine bar after six. In the cellar there is a hammam. On the roof there is a terrace and a plunge pool four metres long. You can borrow a bicycle, although we should warn you about the hills.
The front door, number 9, Travessa do Trigo Novo.
- Rooms
- Sixteen, in six kinds
- Built
- The 1760s
- Hammam
- In the vaulted cellar
- Pool
- A plunge pool on the roof
The rooms
Six kinds of room, sixteen in all.
- Alcove A small room with a big bed and a good window.
- Courtyard Ground floor, French doors, and a garden of ferns and blue tiles.
- Tagus View Terracotta roofs below, the river beyond, and a bed facing both.
- Terrace Suite A glass wall, a private terrace and the whole afternoon to yourself.
- Attic Studio Under the beams, with the sky in two skylights.
- The Apartment The whole rear wing, with a kitchen, a living room and a balcony.
The terrace
The best seat in the house is on the roof.
The terrace faces south and west. By late afternoon the roofs below turn the colour of toast and the river goes silver. There are eight loungers, a plunge pool four metres long, and from June to September a tray of something cold arrives from the bar at half past five.
It is open every day from 9:00 to 21:00 and it is for guests only, so it stays quiet.
Breakfast and the bar
Cooked to order by day. Wine after six.
Marta cooks breakfast between 8:00 and 10:30, with bread from the bakery at the bottom of the lane and marmalade from the tree in the courtyard. Tell her what you like and she will do it twice.
After six, the same room becomes a wine bar with a short list from small growers in the Douro, the Alentejo and the Setúbal peninsula, and plates of cheese, ham and tinned fish. Guests drink first and everyone else books.
The neighbourhood
Everything worth seeing is within fifteen minutes on foot.
Alfama is the oldest district in Lisbon and still a working neighbourhood: washing across the lanes, grilled sardines in summer, fado from an open door. Our team has written down twelve places they actually go. The way home is uphill.
The journal
From the house
The house · 3 min read
How to read the tiles on our stairs
A short guide to the blue and white azulejos on the staircase at Casa Vellum, what they show, how old they are and how to tell old from new.
Light · 3 min read
Where to be at sunset, and where not to
An honest guide to watching the light go down over Alfama, from our terrace, from three viewpoints, and from a bench you will have to find yourself.