Some places you find on purpose, prompted perhaps by a travel guide or proud Portuguese advisor. Others find you. Curia, halfway between Coimbra and Aveiro, just off the IC2, found us.
It’s a strange tale, our ending up there, long enough to fall in love with its historic charm and to make good friends. One of those chance conversations that all adventurous foreign house-hunters should have, that will land you a home not found through conventional channels.
Along the lines of: “You could live in my grandparents’ old guesthouse, which hasn’t been used for many years, if you want. You’d just need to put a bit of work into it,” was an offer that turned out to be music to at least my ears, if not Mrs Munson’s.
We’d found ourselves, with three young children including a fairly new baby, the unfortunate recipients of another ‘chance conversation’ home that really wasn’t working out. The fact that a near derelict old B&B was preferable to our situation at that time tells you a lot about the frying pan we were in, ready to risk possible fire.
Taking the Bandeira brothers up on their kind and timely offer, I was the advance party that made a base-camp within this 80s-heyday Alojamento Local, blitzing it with white emulsion and beginning a brave turnaround to make it liveable once more. But this week’s missive isn’t about the house, as dear to us as it became, it’s about the town, the place that had friends and family believe we’d moved to South East Asia.
“North or South?”, they would ask, when we told them about our new and strange home. “No, it’s Curia, not Korea!”, we would say fairly regularly as we got to know this gem of a place that sports a (truly) grand hotel, another with a thermal spa, and a splendid lake for boating, promenading and spotting huge carp.
Turning off the IC2 main road, made quieter in recent years by the nearby A1 that passes leitão and espumante epicentre, Mealhada, you’re met with a dramatic change in atmosphere and energy. As the grimy, mainly truckers’ road disappears into your rear-view mirror, a splendid and impressively long avenue of plane trees unburdens you of any travel stress, setting the stage for well-hidden and vintage grandeur, just as it would have done for those arriving by horse, early car or train in the early 20th century.
Those travellers would have experienced the Curia Palace Hotel at its absolute best, first opened in 1926, designed by the architect Norte Júnior, and now usually described as Belle Époque with Art Nouveau and Art Deco touches. Somewhat tired now, but still well worth a visit, those in the know call it a jewel of the “Golden Twenties”, as created in Portugal by hotel and hospitality visionary Alexandre de Almeida.
In its ‘roaring’ days, it had a barber, a manicurist, a chapel, a garage, a party room for 600 people, and an Olympic-sized pool opened in 1934, designed by Raul Martins. That Art Deco, “Piscina Paraíso” pool still holds 600m² of water, set in a 12-hectare private park between the thermal baths and the (as far as I know, disused) golf course.
The Palace enjoyed a major refurbishment in mid-2008, and has been the setting for many films. More recently, it was one of the 147 sites the national jury picked for the public vote in the New 7 Wonders of Portugal.
See in the lobby the old switchboard that must have connected some of Portugal’s greatest saints and sinners over the years, and take the hotel’s legendary lift to your room, which still works exactly as it was built (on its way from Germany, it was apparently sent to Korea by mistake). At any moment, you might not be surprised to see Hercule Poirot walk past, just as Gérard Depardieu did when filming here, it’s said.
Walk out of the magnificent driveway, tipping a nod to the black swans, and turn left towards the heart of the village. It’s there you’ll be made curious by the entrance to the Termas Hotel and Park. Legend has it that La Chapelle, a French engineer, cured himself of an illness in 1863 by bathing in the local waters. In 1897, a medical student, Luís Navega, had the waters analysed, and they were judged good for kidney and metabolic conditions, high blood pressure and rheumatism. In 1902, King D. Carlos granted the Sociedade das Águas da Curia a royal charter to exploit the springs, and from the 1920s the elite of Portuguese society gathered there regularly.
The ‘Hotel das Termas’ stands inside the 14-hectare ‘Parque da Curia’, where visitors can still rent, on a good day, a pedalo. Like the Palace, the park has clearly seen better days but is still a wonderful and well-hidden curiosity whose past glamour and secrets you can just make out whispering from the woods and walls. One lady I met, who grew up nearby, when asked: “Did you have a good time here?”, as I pointed to the old nightclub remains encircled by the lake, replied (with a glint in her eye): “Oh yes, too good!”.
From 1902, Curia became one of the most elegant and busiest Portuguese spa destinations. Its casino had stunning concert halls, gaming rooms and reading rooms, with gambling going on despite it being banned. A 1927 decree made Curia a temporary gambling zone, as the government signed its gambling contract with the Sociedade da Curia in 1928. The contract was meant to run 30 years but was abandoned within 20 as the spa declined, and 1958 legislation killed Curia’s Vegas-like inclinations.
There were clearly times when the place must have absolutely buzzed. What a picture it must have been when Portugal’s great, good and glamorous stepped off the train to take the waters, splash their cash, promenade around and boat upon what was then thought to be one of the largest artificial lakes in the Iberian Peninsula. This, a far cry from its now very calm and peaceful atmosphere, where massive untroubled fish and dabbling ducks now enjoy themselves where the hordes once did.
Currently glorious is Curia’s wine shop, which has made its home in the old station waiting room. It’s a key stop on the Rota da Bairrada, where even the Alfa Pendular, Portugal’s fast train, will stop here if enough passengers want to get off and enjoy a wine tasting. I’m not joking. This is Luís Pato ‘country’, the maverick wine producer, who you can also visit.
We really enjoyed living in this now peaceful village. We made friends at the bank, at the local deli and in the cafés. They remember us, and we remember them, whenever we return on a stop-off, perhaps driving to Porto. And what always occurs to me is what an incredible retirement village this place would make with its blessing of hotels, beautiful park, flat topography and excellent but off-the-beaten-track location. Its three big hotels are, in all honesty, desperate for custom, and their better days would appear to be behind them. If any retirement village developer is looking for a site, they would struggle to find somewhere as good as this.
I can easily picture American visitors, or expats choosing Curia for their retirement, believing themselves to be wandering about on an Agatha Christie film set. All that 1920s style, the promenading potential in the balmy night air, and genteel calm. And just a short train journey to the delights of Coimbra and Aveiro. Curia’s crowds may have thinned out over the years, but the stage is still set, and it’s just waiting for its next cast.
