Versão portuguesa aqui.

GPS 38.70120009187912, -9.413486130678796

Ordered to build on the old 17th-century bastion of Nossa Senhora da Conceição by the Dukes of Palmela, this house is one of the most outstanding pieces of summer architecture in Cascais.

The project was designed, between 1870 and 1871, by the English architect Thomas Henry Wyatt who, certainly in agreement with the commissioners, opted for a revivalist aesthetic, with a neo-Gothic feature, which earned him the epithet of "Abbey".

Several resources materialized this intention: the use of stone that covers all the elevations and borders the angles and openings; the sober frames that separate the floors; the sloping roofs that model the various bodies, adding to their apparent asymmetry the diversity of their compositional figures; the austerity of the portal with neo-Gothic molding; and the verticality of the set, assumed by the mansards and rectangular openings at the top that proclaim an expressive feeling of interiority.

In the 1880s, the building would be intervened by the architect José António Gaspar, who added two faceted and two prismatic bodies to the west elevation, with the aim of creating a space for the chapel. The deficiency of the work, however, led the Dukes of Palmela to commission the architect José Luís Monteiro to renovate this wing, between 1890 and 1895, raising a floor in the bodies adjoining the building and eliminating the coverings of the next two prisms.

To the north of the house, a wooded park was developed, with a pond and lakes, which was cut by the construction of the railway and is now open to the public: Parque Palmela.