Quinta da Regaleira

Interesting facts

Monteiro's library of about 30,000 volumes, weighing some 15 tonnes, was sold after his death and bought by the US Library of Congress between 1927 and 1929.

The well's 23 niches are grouped 17, 1 and 5, which a Spanish engineering team in 2010 read as a code for 1715, when the estate was sold at auction.

The well's nine landings are separated by flights of fifteen steps, a scheme usually read as Dante's nine circles or the nine founders of the Templars.

The stonework was deliberately aged with lichens and chemical treatments to look centuries old, though it was built only in the early 20th century.

The underground passages are lined with rough limestone brought from the coast near Peniche, chosen to make the tunnels feel like a submerged world.

Before hiring Luigi Manini, who had designed sets for La Scala in Milan, Monteiro had commissioned plans from the French architect Henri Lusseau in 1895–96.

A terrace in the gardens holds nine statues of classical gods, from Fortuna to Hermes, beside a cast-iron lion of 1837 kept from the previous owners' garden.

The octagonal room at the top of the palace deliberately echoes the round Templar church in the Convent of Christ at Tomar.

The Waterfall Lake, crossed on stepping stones, is said to have been inspired by Lethe, the river of forgetfulness of classical myth.

Although the estate is steeped in esoteric symbols, no document has ever proved that Monteiro belonged to the Freemasons or any similar order.

Why it is worth it

Quinta da Regaleira is the most theatrical of Sintra's romantic estates — a four-hectare hillside of palace, chapel, woods, grottoes and shafts built as a riddle in stone. Its creator was António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro, a Brazilian-born Portuguese magnate nicknamed "Monteiro the Millionaire", who bought the land from the Viscountess of Regaleira's family in 1892 and, with the Italian architect and stage designer Luigi Manini, rebuilt it between 1904 and 1910. Manini drew on Roman, Gothic, Renaissance and above all Manueline forms, the exuberant Portuguese late Gothic of the Age of Discoveries, and packed the estate with emblems that visitors still argue over: alchemy, Freemasonry, the Templars, the Rosicrucians, Dante.

The palace itself is a vertical fantasy of pinnacles, gargoyles, carved capitals and a slim octagonal tower, fronted by a loggia whose stone columns shelter tiled scenes of a royal hunt. Inside, five floors run from the servants' quarters and kitchen, with its food lift, to Monteiro's study; one room is lined with portraits of the kings of Portugal. Opposite stands the small Chapel of the Holy Trinity, built in the same idiom and rising through several levels. Its frescoes show St Teresa of Ávila and St Anthony preaching to the fish, and the floor is inlaid with the armillary sphere and the cross of the Order of Christ ringed by pentagrams; beneath it a crypt connects by a tunnel to the house.

The park is where Regaleira becomes unforgettable. Paths climb from ordered planting below into deliberately wild woodland above, reflecting Monteiro's taste for the primitive, and the ground is threaded with tunnels linking grottoes, a waterfall lake and stepping stones. The celebrated Initiation Well is an inverted tower 27 metres deep: a spiral stair of nine flights, lined with niches, winds down to a compass rose with a Templar cross set in the floor, and from the bottom dark passages lead out to the light at the lake. Nothing here was ever a water supply; the wells were built for ceremony, and it is commonly suggested — though not proven — that they staged an initiation rite. A second, "unfinished" well descends by straight flights. After private owners and a Japanese corporation, the estate was bought by the town of Sintra in 1997 and opened to the public in 1998; it lies within the UNESCO Cultural Landscape of Sintra.

Getting there

Regaleira is on the edge of Sintra's historic centre, about 1.6 km from the town, and within walking distance of the Pena and Moorish Castle hills. Trains on the Sintra Line run from Lisbon's Rossio station to Sintra. The nearest airfield is Cascais (CAT), about 9 km away, but most visitors fly into Lisbon and continue by train.

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From the encyclopaedia

Quinta da Regaleira is a quinta constructed from 1904 to '10 and located near the historic centre of Sintra, Portugal. It is classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO within the "Cultural Landscape of Sintra". Along with the other palaces in the area such as the Quinta do Relógio, Pena, Monserrate and Seteais palaces, it is considered one of the principal tourist attractions of Sintra.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia