Palace of Mafra

A single limestone façade 220 metres long, with a white-marble basilica at its centre and a domed tower at each end, faces the small town of Mafra north-west of Lisbon. Behind it lie a royal palace, a Franciscan friary, around 1,200 rooms and one of the most celebrated libraries in Europe. The Royal Building of Mafra is the grandest monument of Portuguese Baroque, and since 2019 the palace, basilica, convent, Cerco Garden and Tapada hunting park have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It began as a vow. In 1711 King John V promised to found a convent if his queen, Maria Anna of Austria, bore him a child; the birth of the Infanta Barbara set the project in motion, and the first stone was laid on 17 November 1717. What was planned as a modest house for 13 friars grew into a palace-monastery once gold and diamonds from colonial Brazil began pouring into Lisbon. The German-born architect João Frederico Ludovice (Johann Friedrich Ludwig), who had trained in Rome, directed the works. At the peak tens of thousands of labourers toiled on site, and 1,383 died during construction. The basilica, dedicated to Our Lady and Saint Anthony, was consecrated on the king's 41st birthday, 22 October 1730, though work went on until 1755, when the workforce was needed to rebuild Lisbon after the earthquake.

John V wanted to rival Rome, and the borrowings are plain: the central balcony echoes St Peter's, while the 68-metre bell towers and the 70-metre dome recall Borromini's Sant'Agnese in Agone. The towers hold two carillons cast in Flanders, the largest historic set of their kind in the world; according to a well-known story, when the founders asked to be paid in advance, the king answered by doubling the price. Inside the basilica, pink and white marble line the nave, dozens of statues by Roman sculptors fill the aisles, and six organs built between 1792 and 1807 play together as a rare ensemble. The Rococo library, 88 metres long and designed by Manuel Caetano de Sousa, holds over 36,000 leather-bound volumes from the 14th to the 19th centuries — protected by a colony of bats that eat the insects which would otherwise damage the books. The royal apartments were so far apart that the king's approach to the queen's rooms was announced by trumpet.

The building saw the end of the monarchy: on 5 October 1910 King Manuel II left Mafra for the nearby coastal village of Ericeira and exile. José Saramago later made its construction the setting of his novel Baltasar and Blimunda.

Getting there

The palace stands in the centre of Mafra, about 28 km north-west of Lisbon; Ericeira on the Atlantic coast is nearby. Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS) is roughly 25 km away in a straight line, and the smaller Cascais aerodrome (CAT) about 24 km.