Loulé Criativo Design Lab

Palácio de Gama Lobo has watched Loulé change for nearly three centuries. Construction began under Capitão-Mor Manuel José da Gama Lobo Pessanha, stalled for decades after a dispute with the local magistrate, and wasn't finished until almost a hundred years later. Besides serving as a noble manor beside the Igreja de Sant'Ana, it has been a textile and dried-fruit warehouse, a refuge for Spanish Jesuits, a sanatorium, and a sports club's headquarters.

Restored between 2017 and 2019, the palace reopened as the headquarters of Loulé Criativo, a Loulé Municipal Council project dedicated to keeping the region's traditional crafts alive — pottery, metalwork, textiles, clockmaking, string instruments and basketry — by connecting them with contemporary design. Today it is a working incubator: a design lab, a network of seven craft workshops, and a residency where dozens of artisans and creatives pass through daily, turning centuries-old techniques into work made for now.