A secluded 18th-century estate-turned hotel on the tranquil island of Menorca

Passing through the wooden gates and travelling down the long drive, Son Vell makes a theatrical and breathtaking first impression as its honey-coloured marés sandstone façade, pitched roof and pale-blue painted wooden shutters come closer into view. To the left, horses graze in the field and curious mules raise their heads to assess the new arrivals. To the right, wildflowers and the occasional olive tree sway freely in the wind.

The main building houses the public spaces, including the reception, bar, cinema and various sitting areas to lounge in, as well as bedrooms on the upper floors. The back of the house, however, is even more impressive, with three sets of doors opening onto the vast, meandering gardens. From this perspective, the full scale of the hotel is impossible to gauge. Cleverly, further rooms have been created in a series of low-lying, stables-style buildings spread out on either side of the house and concealed among planting.

Wind-bent pines provide welcome shade.

Mark Anthony Fox

To truly admire its beauty, one must walk the grounds to get a sense of the house from various angles. Typical of Palladian architecture, it is an exercise in symmetry with a classical temple front and arched porticos shading the entrance to the house on the ground floor and creating a shaded balcony area above. At either end are the soaring chimneys from the original kitchens, one of which would have served the family and the other the servants.

Through the rose garden and past a row of hedges appears one of the two swimming pools, where a family is making the most of the last of the sun. Along the other side of the garden is the second, quieter pool, as well as the hotel’s two restaurants, Sa Clarisa and Vermell. Much of the produce is grown either at Son Vell or sourced on the island. Son Vell operates as an agriturismo, with a kitchen garden, cows and olive trees. The lamb is outdoor reared on Vestige’s farmland at Torre del Ram, eggs are from ‘happy chickens’ just down the road and cheese is from the many makers on Menorca.

Santa Ana is an 18th-century villa farmhouse recently renovated by Vestige and now available to rent.

Mark Anthony Fox

Besides the kitchen, sustainability runs deep at the hotel, which is 60 per cent self-sufficient in energy thanks to the installation of solar panels and four geothermal wells that power the air-
conditioning among other amenities. The expansive planting of native wildflowers is also a means of energy conservation, as it requires less watering, while encouraging wildlife biodiversity.

A 20-minute walk down a long path through the wildflowers brings you to the sea and the Cami de Cavalls, the 186km coastal walking trail that wraps around the island and gives access to some of its best, most secluded beaches. Menorca was declared a Unesco biosphere reserve in the 1990s and is a walker’s paradise, even in the off-season, when people come to admire the flora and fauna. Son Vell is also about a 20-minute drive from Ciutadella, a charming maze of 17th-century buildings that come alive in the evenings, and there are about 1,600 archaeological sites dotted across the island of Menorca, most notably the Bronze Age remains of Talayotic settlements such as Son Catlar.

A street scene in Ciutadella de Menorca, a port on the west coast.

Mark Anthony Fox

Like so many visitors, as I am told by the experiences manager,
I might have arrived with an ambitious list of places and activities to tick off, but I leave having hardly crossed out any of them. Time moves differently here – and that’s just the point.

Ways and means

Rooms at Son Vell start at €750, B&B, based on two sharing (two-night minimum stay). Santa Ana has six bedrooms and starts at €2,880 per night (three-night minimum stay). This summer Vestige is opening two new mini hotels, Son Ermità and Binidufà, each with 11 bedrooms, in 18th-century fincas on the same estate. Rooms from €650, B&B. vestigecollection.com