Facing the Tagus from Praça do Comércio, one of Europe's great civic squares, the Pombaline palace that houses Pousada de Lisboa was built as part of Lisbon's systematic reconstruction following the catastrophic 1755 earthquake — its ochre-and-limestone facade, with arcaded ground floor and wrought-iron balconies, designed as a component of Marquis of Pombal's rational urban grid rather than as a standalone monument. The building served as a government ministry for over two centuries before Pestana converted it into a 90-room hotel in 2016, with interiors by architect José Adrião that attempt to hold the eighteenth-century fabric in conversation with a restrained contemporary sensibility. The results vary by floor. Suites facing the river carry genuine grandeur — tall casement windows opening onto the Tejo, parquet floors in a fine herringbone pattern, warm timber credenzas paired with upholstered linen sofas and Portuguese contemporary art hung against pale plaster walls. Standard rooms, visible in the images, shift register toward a crisper, more corporate palette of dark walnut floors and white lacquered joinery, the hanging brass pendants adding warmth without quite resolving the contrast. Downstairs, the restaurant reveals the building's oldest surviving layer: a sequence of barrel-vaulted brick ceilings, terracotta in colour and herringbone-laid in texture, set above patterned encaustic tile floors and ebonised bistro chairs — the most architecturally compelling space in the property, and the one that earns the Pousada classification its meaning.

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