Conversion of the Santa Maria do Bouro Convent
Pousada de Santa María do Bouro
Situated in Amares, near the historic city of Braga and the Gerês mountain range, the Pousada de Amares is intriguingly housed in a 12th century Cistercian monastery. In keeping with the Cistercians' tradition of settling on the most rugged fringes of the European continent, the monastery is rough and almost surrealistically plain. In the process of converting it into a hotel, one of Portugal's most esteemed architects, Eduardo Souto Moura, sought to 'find the lucidity that exists between form and function'. For him, the ruins were more important than the actual monastery since they represented material that could be manipulated to more challenging effect, just as the building itself had been throughout the course of history. Many of the rough stone columns and arches of the old structure are preserved, but that which had disappeared over time was not simply reconstructed in imitation.
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