The authoritative site for O Baile do Peral is www.peral.silvert.org - other sites are mirrors and may be out of date.

O Antigo Baile do Peral

Well we did it, we went down to the Algarve on a Friday in the summer of 2001 and handed over a down payment on our casa dos sonhos, the house of our dreams. Of course actually buying the house took time, and we were only able to close the deal in November, but at last it is ours, as are all the bills for repairs and remodelling.

 The more we look at it the more we love it. It is quite large, about 220 m² (2500 square feet) with a yard that is about 1600 m² (20,000 square feet, about half an acre if I have my units straight). It is one story high, about 30' x 75', and it sort of winds along a turn in the road. There is a huge living room that used to be a public ballroom, a fair sized dining room that used to be a tavern, three bathrooms, five bedrooms (we have no idea what these were for!), and lots of small utility rooms. At one end we have a social area (living and dining rooms, kitchen, office, foyer, bathroom, pantry and laundry room), at the other end he have  the master bedroom and two guest rooms that open on to a lovely atrium. We also have a guest house, so there is plenty of room for visitors.

We have laboriously tried to construct a floor plan, and while it is pretty rough, it gives you an idea of what there is and where. You can click on it to see it with greater detail.

The latest development is that we are in the process of buying the café across the road from us and will be opening it soon as the Centro de Investigação Gastronómica!

The house is in Peral, a very small village in the Concelho of São Brás de Alportel in the eastern Algarve, near Faro and just north of Olhão. Mi now works in Olhão, where IPIMAR (her institute) has a branch, CRIP-Sul. Click on the map to see a more detailed version and if you want to visit we provide detailed directions.

The house is closed and private on the street side, there are several doors but only a couple of very small windows. On the other side the living room, the office, the atrium, the master bedroom and one of the guest bedrooms all open onto the yard. There is a large courtyard with a barbecue. And the greatest and most essential luxury of all, a swimming pool.

We also have a guest house, a converted building that was probably once a stable but had fallen into ruin, where family and friends are always welcome. We call our house "O Baile do Peral", the Peral Ballroom, which is what it was called when it still functioned as a dance hall, and we have a plaque of azulejos (Portuguese tiles) by the front door to identify it as such. We have met people from Peral and also from Faro who remember going to dances there when they were young. We even know two married couples who met there!

Our decision to maintain the historical character of the building has generated a lot of favourable attention in the community, as a clipping from the local parochial magazine illustrates.

It took a long time to bring the house to its current state. Those of you who have been following this site will recall a long sequence of pages with depressing imagines of a hopeless ruin. We decided it was time to get rid of those, with just a few souvenirs of the past to remind us of what we sent through.

We have a page describing the progress being made in August 2003, with some later updates.

Since the work is on-going, this site will keep developing for a long time. Click here for the current state of things! (And even this page is out of date and needs to be updated.)

Bill Silvert & Mi Cunha

This site is maintained by William Silvert, to whom all comments should be addressed. Last updated on 2006-12-29. There is a Table of Contents for the site.