Confessions of a Castleholic

Has it ever happened to you that you wanted to visit a castle, went there and then realised that you came on the only day of the week it is closed to the public? That is exactly what happened to me at the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda  to me last year. I still took some pictures from the outside and so I thought I would share the history of the former home of the Portuguese royal family with you anyway. The 1755 earthquake that hit Lisbon and the surrounding areas had a lasting impact on the life of the royal family of Portugal. Their primary residence, the  Paço da Ribeira in central Lisbon, was destroyed. While the family had stayed in nearby Belém during the catastrophe that killed tens of thousands of people, King José I refused to live under a residence of masonry and instead took refuge in a wooden shack next to the palace of the Counts of Óbidos. He soon ordered for a more elaborate wooden building to be constructed in the hills of Ajuda. The Real Barraca...

Burial places are weirdly fascinating, aren't they?! They express how a society mourns their dead and naturally you will find that royal resting places are usually in a class of their own showing the deceased monarchs in all their splendour. The Pantheon of the House of Bragança - or Panteão da Casa de Bragança in Portuguese - is the final resting place of dozens of members of the former royal family of Portugal and Brazil and actually astonishingly sombre. Light with lots of white marble - and a statue that freaked the hell out of me because I turned around and thought there was a massive person standing there. The Pantheon of the House of Bragança is part of the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon. It was in 1834, after the dissolution of religious in Portugal, that the monastery was transformed into a palace for the archbishops of Lisbon. About two decades later, in 1855, King Ferdinand II ordered for the old monastery's refectory to be turned into a burial...

It's kind of a sad day here on Castleholic as with the Palácio Nacional da Sintra we will cover the last of the palaces I saw last year in wonderful Sintra, possibly the palace-richest place on earth near the Portuguese capital Lisbon. I will need to go back someday though as in addition to this goodie, the Palácio Nacional da Pena , the Castelo dos Mouros and the Quinta and Palácio da Regaleira , there are still a handful or two of handsome places to see for any castle lover! Of all the many palaces in Sintra, the palace bearing the city's name is the only one located directly in the town centre. While much of today's Palácio Nacional da Sintra originates from the times of King João I of Portugal, royal residences on the site date back even further. During the Moorish Al-Andalus era, after the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th century, Sintra had two castles: One, the Castelo dos Mouros , was located atop the hill and remains as a romantic ruin, the oth...

The heart of the enchanting Quinta da Regaleira is the Palácio of the same name. It was built by António Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro. He was born in 1848 as the son of a wealthy Portuguese family who lived in Brazil and whose fortunes were made from the monopoly of the coffee trade and precious stones. In Portugal he was known as Monteiro dos Milhões - Monteiro of the Millions. Carvalho Monteiro acquired the estate in 1892 and set out to create his own wonderland featuring lots of concealed symbolism referencing alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians. Carvalho had already owned some land around the Quinta da Regaleira and in 1896 bought more land from the Marquess de Praia e Monforte adding to the estate. Even before Carvalho Monteiro, the place had been home to many wealthy and noble people: The property was first owned by Francisco Alberto Guimarães de Castro, who acquired the land in 1715 when it was known as Quinta da Torre , after a tower built in...

Enchanted wells, secret tunnels and a Gothic palace - the Quinta da Regaleira is like stepping right into a fairytale. The estate is located near the historic centre of Sintra, the city near Lisbon in Portugal where even the description "overflowing with castles" may just be the understatement of the century. Along with all the castles and palaces also come a bunch of wonderful parks - and the Quinta da Regaleira certainly is the most enchanting of them. The land that is now the Quinta da Regaleira had many different owners over the years. The man who gave the park its current fantastic appearance was António Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro, an entomologist born to Portuguese parents in Rio de Janeiro, who had inherited a huge family fortune, which he enlarged in Brazil by selling coffee and precious stones. He returned to Portugal, earned a law degree and became a well-known collector and bibliophile. In 1892, he bought the estate belonging to the Viscountess of R...