20th Century Palace

Located at the outer limits of the historical centre of the borough, the Palace was built between 1904 and 1910, during the very last years of the Portuguese Monarchy.

The romantic domains that once belonged to the Viscountess of Regaleira were, later on, purchased by doctor António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro (1848-1920) to found his elected place.

Owner of a huge fortune that inspired the nickname of “Monteiro dos Milhões” by which he became known, doctor Carvalho Monteiro congregated in this peculiar architectural and environmental project the creative ingenuity of the Italian scenery designer and architect Luigi Manini (1848-1936) and the craftsmanship of the sculptors, stone cutters and wood carvers that had previously worked on the Buçaco Palace Hotel project under Manini’s direction. Gifted with a scientific spirit, a vast culture and a rare sensitivity, and being also a noticeable and thorough collector (with a vast private library) and a great philanthropist, Carvalho Monteiro carved in the immense and intricate stone-book in which he turned the Palace to his cosmological vision - a synthesis of the spiritual memory of mankind - deeply rooted in the Universal and Portuguese Mythical Traditions.
The architecture and artistic conception of the palace, the chapel and the remaining constructions were framed in the scenic context of a Garden of Eden where the “neo-Manuelino” and the Renascence styles clearly predominate.

The garden represents the micro-cosmos and is revealed through a succession of places endowed with magic and mystery. The paradise is materialised in coexistence with an inferious - a Dantesque subterranean world - in which the neophyte would be guided by the Ariadne thread of Initiation. A full sensorial and environment-conditioned approach has been devised to represent and impart the experience of the Initiation quest - a “vera peregrinatio mundi” through a symbolic garden where one may feel the Harmony of the Spheres and scrutinize the alignment of an ascent of consciousness.

In this microcosmical trip one may spot references to the mythology, to the Olympus, to Virgil, to Dante, to Camões, to the Temple mission of the Order of Christ, to great mysticists and teachers of mankind, to the enigma of the Royal Art and to the Great Alchemical Masterpiece.

In this symphony of stone, crafted by the hands of temple-builders, driven by a true spirit of Tradition, the poetic and prophetical dimension of a Portuguese Philosophical Mansion is revealed. “Here do Heaven and Earth meet and merge in a tangible reality, the same that presided over the formulation of the theory of Beauty, of Architecture and of Music, whose echoes the acoustic shell of the Terrace of Celestial Worlds propagates throughout infinity.”