The British, for all their imperial sins, left India with an inconvenient legacy: an eye for proportion, restraint, and buildings that understood landscape before spectacle. That quiet discipline—of letting place lead form—feels unexpectedly alive at Araqila Resort by SaffronStays, a contemporary fortress on the Konkan coast that borrows more from that sensibility than from today’s Instagram maximalism.

Perched on a cliff above the sleepy village of Arawali in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district, Araqila is designed by London-based Serie Architects. The resort’s low-rise silhouette unfurls in soft, whitewashed arcs. Walls curve and undulate like frozen waves, echoing the restless Arabian Sea below. There is no brute verticality here. Instead, the architecture flows horizontally, responding to wind, light, and horizon. The lobby opens directly to an endless blue; the restaurant is wrapped in floor-to-ceiling glass; the infinity pool appears to spill straight into the ocean.

This sensitivity to site feels especially resonant in a land once guarded by stone. Seventeen sea and land forts were raised along the Konkan under Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Today, 12 of those forts—built between the 17th and 19th centuries—stand newly crowned as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Among them, the formidable sea-facing Sindhudurg Fort still rises from the waves like a relic that refuses to soften.

Araqila gently insists that you step outside. Lawns are trimmed and terraced; a stone pathway winds upward to the highest point of the property, where sunset turns the sea molten gold. A trail drops down the cliff to two near-private beaches—Arawali and Mochemad—still largely claimed by fishing boats, drying nets, and the occasional wandering dog. Northern Goa shimmers in the distance. Vengurla Beach is just 20 minutes away, while a half-day excursion to Malvan brings you face-to-face with Sindhudurg’s ancient ramparts.

Araqila may look nothing like the forts that once guarded this coast, but it shares their most important instinct: an understanding of place.