Year-round · Included
The thermal baths
Monchique's Roman-era thermal springs are a twenty-minute walk from the house. We arrange private morning access for guests, before the public hours open. You will be the only ones there.
The first off-grid wellness house in southern Europe. One house, two cabins, ten guests. No WiFi. No schedule. Just the mountain, the water, and the work of coming back to yourself.
A retreat built on a single premise: the most valuable thing we can offer you is nothing.
No WiFi. No televisions. No notifications. No programme you're supposed to follow. One house, two cabins, and the mountain. Solar-powered, spring-fed, deliberately disconnected from everything you came here to leave behind.
What remains when the noise stops: sauna heat. Cold water. Movement. Silence. Food grown or foraged within walking distance. Sleep so deep you forget what day it is. The kind of rest that actually rebuilds something.
We are building it into a nineteenth-century ruin on a south-facing slope of the Serra de Monchique. Construction begins January 2027. The first guests arrive in the autumn.
This is where we begin. A nineteenth-century stone farmhouse on a south-facing slope — roofless, overgrown, still standing. The walls are local schist, laid without mortar. The land has a spring. We are not building from nothing — we are restoring what the mountain already gave.
The Serra de Monchique rises from the south of Portugal forty minutes before the coast becomes the Atlantic. Cork oak and chestnut, eucalyptus and olive. Water that still comes from springs. A climate held mild by the ocean on one side and the mountain on the other.
The Romans walked here for the thermal baths. The Moors terraced the schist into gardens. For a thousand years this has been a place people come to recover — from empire, from illness, from themselves. The land is old in a way that feels restorative rather than tired.
There is no resort here. No airport traffic. A small town with a Sunday market and two cafes that have been there long enough. This is the kind of quiet that takes three days to hear.
Every system in the house was chosen to remove you from the grid — not because it is fashionable, but because the grid is exactly what you need a break from.
All energy from rooftop and ground-mounted photovoltaic panels with lithium storage. No mains connection. The house runs on the same sun that warms the terrace.
Gravity-fed from a spring on the property, filtered through the same schist that has been cleaning it for centuries. Hot water heated by solar thermal tubes.
There is no internet connection on the property. Your phone goes into a handmade wooden locker on arrival. You get it back when you leave. This is not negotiable.
The main house: three bedrooms, a kitchen that faces the valley, a roof that follows the land. Exterior walls of local schist, laid by hand as they have been in these hills for centuries. Interiors of pale wood and white render — cool in summer, warm in winter, quiet in every light.
Two cabins set among the trees, each built for one or two. Private, minimal, a room and a view. For the guest who came to be alone and means it.
Between the buildings: sauna, cold plunge in a granite basin restored from the ruin, a gym with stone walls and natural light. No spa reception. No towel service. Just the tools, and the silence to use them in.
Architecture — Preliminary study by the studio, July 2025. Final commission pending. Construction begins January 2027.
There is no itinerary. A small number of things you can do, well, slowly. Everything below is included. We don't bolt wellness on as a package — it is simply what is here.
Monchique's Roman-era thermal springs are a twenty-minute walk from the house. We arrange private morning access for guests, before the public hours open. You will be the only ones there.
Sauna on the terrace. Cold plunge in a granite basin restored from the ruin. Not performance wellness — the simple oscillation of hot and cold that the body already knows how to use.
A stone-walled room with natural light, a barbell, kettlebells, rings, and a pull-up bar. No mirrors, no music, no screens. Train the way the body was built to move — with nothing between you and the effort.
Four hours through the chestnut forest and up to the ridgeline, led by a local who knows every mushroom, every spring, every abandoned shepherd's hut. What we gather becomes dinner.
Once a week, dinner is served in silence. Three courses, thirty minutes, no conversation. The point is not austerity. The point is to eat, for once, without performing.
Rooms designed for deep sleep. Blackout, low-gain lighting, 18 °C, no screens anywhere. The single thing most guests tell us they didn't know they came for.
Three durations. Same rhythm. You arrive, you surrender your phone, and for three, five, or seven days the only schedule is the one your body sets.
One from Portugal, one from the north. One who spent a decade helping Nordic and Iberian companies cross borders, and one who wanted a reason to come south.
We built careers on connectivity — planes, calls, Slack channels across time zones. Then we started looking for the opposite. We found it by walking, in the hills above the Algarve, in a ruin nobody had touched in fifty years.
Veluma is the kind of place we needed when we most needed one, and couldn't find. So we're building it.
— Miguel & Hanna, Founders
Construction begins January 2027. We plan to welcome the first guests in autumn 2027. Founding guests (those who reserve a €1 spot) will have first choice of dates.
A place on the founding guest list. You get private build updates, first access to booking dates when we open, and founder rates — 20% below published prices — locked for the first two seasons. The €1 is fully refundable at any time, no questions asked.
Correct. No WiFi, no mobile signal boosted on the property. Your phone goes into a handmade wooden locker on arrival. If you have an emergency contact need, we have a landline at the house. This is the whole point.
Fly to Faro (FAO), 75 minutes by car. We can arrange a transfer from the airport. From Lisbon, it is about three hours south. The nearest town is Monchique — ten minutes by car, or a forty-minute walk down through the cork oaks.
All electricity comes from rooftop and ground-mounted solar panels with battery storage. Water is gravity-fed from a spring on the property. Hot water from solar thermal. We are not connected to the municipal electricity grid, the water mains, or the internet. Everything the house needs, the land provides.
Absolutely. The cabins are built for exactly this — solo guests who want solitude. About half of the people on the founding list so far are coming alone. You will share communal spaces (kitchen, sauna, meals) but private time is the default, not the exception.
All food is seasonal and local. We cook with what the land and the market give us. We accommodate vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and most allergies — just let us know when booking. The kitchen is open between meals if you want to cook for yourself.
Put down €1 to secure your spot as a founding guest. You'll get private build updates, first choice of dates when bookings open, and founder rates — 20% below published prices — held for the first two seasons.
The €1 is fully refundable at any time. No commitment. Just a signal that you're serious, and we should save you a seat.
Secure payment via Stripe. Fully refundable. No further obligation.
You're in. Welcome to the founding circle. We'll be in touch.
Join the Founders List for progress updates and early access when bookings open. One email per quarter. Nothing else.
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