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GPS 38.796975842653154, -9.396024399999998
The Palácio da Regaleira is the main building and the most common name of Quinta da Regaleira. Also known as Palácio do Monteiro dos Milhões, a name associated with the nickname of its former owner, António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro.
The palace is located on the slopes of the mountains and a short distance from the Historic Center of Sintra, being classified as a Property of Public Interest since 2002.
Carvalho Monteiro, through the lines of the Italian architect Luigi Manini, transforms the 4-hectare farm into a palace surrounded by lush gardens, lakes, caves and enigmatic buildings, places that hide alchemical meanings, such as those evoked by Freemasonry, Templars and Rosicrucians. It models the space in mixed layouts, which evoke Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Manueline architecture.
Quinta da Regaleira is a place to feel. It is not enough to tell him the memory, the landscape, the mysteries. It is necessary to get to know it, contemplate the scenography of the gardens and buildings, admire the Palace, a true philosopher's mansion of alchemical inspiration, walk through the exotic park and feel its spirituality.
History
The palace at Quinta da Regaleira was built in the first decades of the 20th century by Carvalho Monteiro, who commissioned the project from the Italian set designer Luigi Manini. With a neo-Manueline revivalist prospect, it stands out for its decorative profusion. The leafy gardens, like a three-dimensional scenario, are characterized by wells, caves, lakes and pavilions that reveal the commentator's taste, with abundant symbolic allusions, some of them of Masonic origin.
The Bride's Cake was the denomination that the inhabitants of the town of Sintra used to define that unreal structure that stood not far from the palace of the Kings. Scenographically, nothing had ever been seen that could compare to it. It is certain that the various palaces such as Monserrate or Pena, a result of the Romantic period, were worthy of works of art in their own right, enchanting scholars and illiterates. However, the new farm of millionaire Dr. António Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro was something different. The end result featured several structures decorated in a revivalist style that absolutely no one could remain indifferent to.
To understand a little of the history of Quinta da Regaleira we have to go back a few centuries, more precisely to the 17th century. The available documentation is scarce, however, it is known that, in 1697, José Leite acquired an extensive property at the end of the village of Sintra, which more or less corresponds to the current limits of the park. A few years later, in 1715, the farm was acquired at public auction by Francisco Alberto de Castro and bore the toponym of Quinta da Torre or Castro. The new owner introduced piped water to the farm, from a spring in the Sintra mountains.
In 1830, the farm belonged to Manuel Bernardo Lopes Fernandes and, in 1840, it became the property of the daughter of a wealthy Porto businesswoman, named Ermelinda Allen, who was later awarded the nobility title of Baroness from Regaleira. Quinta da Regaleira received this name because, according to tradition, the new owner found the view from one of the garden towers a delight.
Quinta da Regaleira was, however, still far from what it would become at the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to a palace and a chapel, there are a number of other structures that feature profuse revivalist decoration, saturated with symbolic meanings.
In 1892, the then Barons of Regaleira sold the property to the well-known millionaire Monteiro dos Milhões, that is, to Dr. Antonio Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro. Born in Rio de Janeiro, in 1848, to Portuguese parents, he left Brazil early on and came to Portugal, where he graduated in Law at the University of Coimbra. Owner of considerable wealth, he acquired the property in Sintra to build a very special palace there.
Carvalho Monteiro was a man of significant culture. Being an undeniable lover of the national epic, he incorporated the main symbols of the Portuguese nation into the decoration of his new palace, thus recalling the golden moments experienced by the Portuguese people in their several centuries of existence. This gesture was translated into a revivalist taste with a strong focus on ornamentation in the Manueline style, possibly because this was one of the main moments of glory that the country went through with the discovery of new paths to other parts of the globe or, at least, one of the periods that He bequeathed us an architectural style with a typically Portuguese decoration and which has been agreed, nowadays, to be called Manueline because it was created in the reign of the Fortunate King.
Sintra presents itself to the world as a magical crucible, almost different from all the places on earth that we know. As such, Carvalho Monteiro's work would not be just any work and, being inspired by the structural and decorative eclecticism of the lofty Palácio da Pena, he invited one of the best, if not the best set designer of the time to design his dream, the Italian Luigi Manini, who had finished work on the Hotel Palace do Buçaco in neo-Manueline style. It was Manini himself who was in charge of designing the plans and building Carvalho Monteiro's work.
In addition to the palace, the architect also intervened in the four hectares of the estate, designing interventions for lakes, caves, enigmatic buildings, lush gardens and other places, laden with alchemical, Masonic or even related symbology to the Templars and the Rosicrucians that , with the usual fog that rises on the slopes of the mountain, give the place a dense aura of mystery. The architecture itself was clearly inspired by the various architectural models, since the birth of the nation, with structures evoking Romanesque, Gothic, as mentioned above, Renaissance and Manueline, and even Art Nouveau. The works ended in 1910.
Until this moment, Sintra had witnessed the building, here and there, of various residential and/or palatial structures with the aim of permanent residence, summer or simply for other reasons that are not important to explore here. Quinta da Regaleira breaks with this tradition and takes advantage of the magic of the Sintra mountains to become, itself, a magical space full of indecipherable codes and symbols that challenge the observer and populate his imagination.
Luigi Manini, the scenographer invited to design the new structure, also worked at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon. No wonder, therefore, that the setting at Quinta da Regaleira looks like something out of an opera scene. The set formed by the palace, the chapel, the initiation well, the lakes, the sculptures, the towers, the artificial caves, viewpoints, spaces for meetings and other enchanting corners, take us away from the reality we live in on a day-to-day basis. . Everything thought and worked to the smallest detail and detail.
The iconographic wealth, sometimes encrypted, of each stonework piece, invites anyone to unravel its reading. The symbols, figures, objects, emblems, cartouches, shapes, etc... are surprising, in which Manini's originality gave the set a series of exceptional characteristics that transformed almost the entire space of the farm and the respective garden into an extraordinary one. opera scene.
The wealth of symbology that we find here is not always accessible to the observer. If, on the one hand, the allusions to the Manueline style are easy to identify, other elements related to Dante's inferno, or even to Egyptology, are a little more complicated and require additional knowledge that often requires even clear notions of concepts. linked to symbolism. This vast space, full of mysticism and initiatory paths, was, according to some authors, purposely made for those who belong to Freemasonry.
Despite its mystical aura, we don't know for sure if any rituals or anything similar to them ever took place there. In 1942, the now famous Quinta da Regaleira was bought by millionaire Waldemar D`Orey. Immediately after the acquisition, he hired two important architects, Luís de Couto and António Lino, to remodel the interior of the palace in order to adapt it to his large family and eliminate some decorative elements.
Later, in 1988, Waldemar D'Orey's heirs sold the property to the Japanese company Aoki Corporation, which kept it closed with only a caretaker to guard it. Finally, in 1997, Quinta da Regaleira was acquired by the Municipality of Sintra, being managed by the Cultursintra Foundation. In May 1998, he received the first National Historical Heritage Award from Ford Portuguesa.
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