In Portugal, a Former Royal Home Opens as a Hotel

A decade ago, the Spanish landscape designer Fernando Caruncho began working on a project that would link the private walled gardens of several aristocratic estates in the Portuguese village of Santar, in the Dão wine region. Now, visitors will have a new way to access the 50-acre parkland: One of the ancestral manor homes within Caruncho’s greenscape has been converted into a small hotel. Formerly known as Casa das Fidalgas and owned by the House of Bragança, who ruled Portugal from 1640 to 1910, when the monarchy was overthrown, Valverde Santar Hotel & Spa served as a residence for the Bragança family until 2019. The Porto-based design firm Atelier Bastir carried out a restoration of the residence, preserving original details — including pitched, wood-paneled ceilings, 18th-century French and Portuguese furniture and bookshelves lined with hundreds of timeworn tomes — while carving out 21 rooms, some with hand-painted ceilings. At the Memórias restaurant, the chef Luís Almeida serves regional specialties such as roasted goat with smoked rice and a buttery cheese-and-citrus pudding, made with ingredients sourced from Santar Vila Jardim’s gardens. Guests can wander through the property’s vast acreage to pick aromatic herbs including lemongrass and chamomile to be used for massages and facials at the hotel’s spa, housed in what was once the estate’s wine cellar. From $490 a night, valverdesantar.com.

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Charm Necklaces That Cater to All Moods

The concept of a charm necklace or bracelet can be traced back to ancient times, when early civilizations imbued talismans with spiritual significance. For her latest collection, the Los Angeles-based designer Darya Khonsary — who often references her Persian ancestry in her jewelry line, Darius — looked to the shapes of idols that were uncovered at the site of the Mesopotamian Eye Temple at Tell Brak and dated to the third millennium B.C. Khonsary created pieces including earrings, a ring and a charm that could be strung on a necklace, all made of 18-karat Fairmined gold. The Paris-based designer Fanny Boucher takes a lighthearted approach to charms with her brand Bangla Begum, offering a selection of trinkets with suggested meanings. Among the available trinkets are a frog, symbolizing a French lover, and a chess piece, which plays on the French word “échec” (failure) to celebrate a failed relationship. Timeless Pearly’s Leslie Chetrit launched her brand in 2017 with an array of…