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Casoneta
The Sunday Stay
A modern villa above its infinity pool at sunset, hills and sea behind

Retreat, not rental

Places worth planning a trip around

Casoneta is a short, hand-picked list of places to stay in Europe where the building itself makes the trip — a lighthouse, a watermill, a treehouse, a house where two or three days on the property is the point of the week.

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Three kinds of place

A building with a past, a house worth the drive, or one thing on the land that sets the week.

An old stone mill house on the bank of a fast mountain river, green ridges rising behind it

Reimagined Places

Sleep in a lighthouse, a watermill, a station with no trains.
A white timber studio, all angles, alone on a headland above a grey sea

Architectural Escapes

Treehouses, timber shelters, a cork cabin round a chestnut tree.
A russet farmhouse above its own vineyard rows, a wide lake and blue hills behind it

Experience-Led Stays

A pool above the Douro. A telescope beside the bed.

The idea

The place is the reason you go

Most places to stay are somewhere to sleep between the things you came for. Casoneta collects the opposite: places where two or three days on the property is the point of the week.

About Casoneta

Latest stories

The buildings, the people who keep them, and the trips they make possible.

An abandoned rural railway station at Arraiolos, Alentejo, in dry summer grass

Roundup

5 Stations, Press Houses and Container Conversions in Portugal and the Azores We'd Actually Travel For

Five buildings nobody put up for sleeping in: a heritage-listed border railway station let by the room or taken whole for twenty-two, a São Miguel estate's press house that sleeps four, and three shipping-container conversions running from forty-seven square metres of sea-facing glass to a thirty-five-metre box with a half-bath. Former uses, sizes and the awkward facts.

1 September 2026

Read all the stories

Destinations

Where the list has reached so far

The Douro turning between green terraced hills at Ervedosa do Douro

Portugal

Douro terraces, schist villages, the Atlantic islands.
The Xallas river falling to the sea at Ézaro, Galicia

Galicia

Green rías, granite pazos, the wild Costa da Morte.

Before you book

The questions that come up most

What is Casoneta, and how does a house get in?

A short, hand-picked list of places in Europe where the building, the grounds or the water is the reason to go — somewhere you would plan the whole trip around. A feature is earned against a published standard, and it comes down again if a place stops meeting it.

How do I book one of these houses?

Every write-up says how that house can currently be booked, and the link goes straight to the house's own page. You book with the house directly, the same way you would if you had found it yourself.

Who are the houses for?

Groups, mostly. Families, several couples travelling together, a reunion that wants one long table and a kitchen built for eight. Family-and-group orientated rather than family-only: four adults on a wine estate belong here as much as three generations do.

Where are the houses?

Portugal and Galicia so far: the mainland, Madeira, the Azores and the coast across the northern border. The list is now going Europe-wide, one kind of place at a time, and each country gets a top ten of its own as it arrives.

How do I hear about new houses?

The Sunday Stay: one exceptional house, every Sunday. Not a digest — one house, why it is worth the trip, and how it can currently be booked.

Own a house like these? See what we look for, or put it forward.

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