Monte Palace is an abandoned hotel in São Miguel island, Azores.

Once a luxurious 5 star hotel in a privileged location in Vista do Rei viewpoint – on top of a mountain overseeing famous Sete Cidades lagoon – Monte Palace opened for business for a scarce 18 months, after which it closed forever and went bankrupt.

Yet the building still stands there. It used to have security guards to prevent intrusions, but ever since they left in 2011, Monte Palace was subject to looting and vandalism. Just like many other urbex abandoned buildings.

Nowadays people can access to it freely. Well, not from the legal viewpoint as you are trespassing private property and there are warning signs making sure you are aware of it.

In any case, there is nothing physically preventing you to do so. So my girlfriend and I, just like many other tourists visiting Vista do Rei viewpoint, felt invited to walk in from its main entrance and visit this once sumptuous 5 star hotel.

As you might imagine, after decades of abandonment the building is now in decay, covered with vegetation, humidity, mushrooms and the likes. It rains inside and the floor is mostly wet.

I read somewhere that the authorities decided to remove all the windows to avoid injuries with the broken glasses. Which is quite funny because it sort of acknowledged the existence of intruders and in a way even made their life easier.

I was always a fan of urbex. There is something about abandoned buildings and cities that I find romantically eerie and attractive. I enjoy the stories behind the sudden abandonment of these places.

Mind me, normally these stories are not happy ones, sometimes involving tragic accidents. Like Chernobyl. A visit to the abandoned city of Pripyat is still in my bucket list, although with war in Ukraine now I’m not sure if I would ever get the chance to do it.

My girlfriend and myself, we were properly geared up to explore Monte Palace hotel. In the Azores we were wearing our hiking gear everyday, so our waterproof shoes with their thick, anti-slippery soles were adequate.

Well, construction site shoes with steel toes and soles would be even better, since I could see nails sticking out from the debris. A lot of those came from the false ceiling that collapsed.

Some visitors were wearing flip-flops though. Ouch.

After checking the hall at the ground floor level, we found this staircase leading to the upper floors. Just like everybody else, we wanted to reach the roof to get a nice view of Sete Cidades lagoon.

There were no guardrails, so we made sure to walk slowly.

Before reaching the roof, we got to check some suites, their large balconies overseeing the lake and the beautiful surrounding landscape. With such good conditions, I started wondering why the hotel did not make it.

Probably back then Azores was not as popular a tourist destination as it is today, Monte Palace being a case of right product, wrong time.

Whatever. When we finally reached the top of the building, the views put a stop to these thoughts.

The views were simply stunning. Weather conditions were so-so. A blue sky was visible, but clouds were blocking the sun light in many areas.

The lake is supposed to show two colours – blue and green – separated by the bridge in the middle. You can get a glimpse of it in the first photo above, but there is no pop.

Truth is, I took these photos with my Hasselblad 907 100c and XCD 4/28P lens. They are under exposed. I could positively pull the sliders in post processing and get all the details out of the shadows, such is the power of the 100 MP medium format sensor. Which I did as a try, but the photos looked so HDR and artificial to me.

Instead, I prefer to keep the photos as is. All photos were post-processed to the bare minimum. I used Hasselblad’s dedicated Phocus app which brings out the best colours from the RAW files.

I like the darkness in them, I like the look and I like the chiaroscuro in them, the transition from the shadows to the lighter patches.

More to come.