the last king's hunting palace, that never quite became a palace
The Palácio do Bussaco started as a commission from D. Carlos I, in the late nineteenth century, to serve as a royal summer palace and hunting lodge, in the middle of the Cistercian forest of Bussaco. The project was commissioned in 1886 from Italian architect and stage designer Luigi Manini (the same one behind Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra), who was at the time set designer for the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos. The plans were approved in 1888, construction began that year, and the complex was completed in 1907. Three years later, the monarchy fell. D. Manuel II left for exile in 1910, and the palace that the royal family never really got to live in was converted into a hotel in 1917 by the Alexandre de Almeida family (recently founded at the time).
The style is unabashedly neo-Manueline. Manini designed a building that is, in part, a theatrical recreation of the height of the Age of Discovery: rope motifs, armillary spheres, botanical ornament and ogival arches that directly echo the Torre de Belém and the cloister of the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. The carved stone came from Ançã (the white limestone from the Coimbra region that made it possible to work stone with the delicacy of the original Manueline). Manini was succeeded by Nicola Bigaglia, José Alexandre Soares and Manuel Joaquim Norte Júnior, who in 1905 designed the Casa dos Brasões, the lateral annex in Manueline style.
The interior is an inventory of early twentieth-century Portuguese art. The azulejo panels in the vestibule are by Jorge Colaço, and depict the Battle of Bussaco, episodes from the Lusíadas, plays by Gil Vicente and the Peninsular War (these are his most celebrated compositions). The mural painting was done by António Ramalho, Carlos Reis and João Vaz; the sculpture by Costa Motta Sobrinho and António Gonçalves. The master stonemasons came from the Escola Livre das Artes do Desenho de Coimbra. For anyone interested in Portuguese turn-of-the-century art, it's one of the densest places in the country.
The building is surrounded by the Mata Nacional do Bussaco, with 105 hectares planted by the Discalced Carmelites in the seventeenth century as a symbolic representation of Mount Carmel and the Earthly Paradise. The monks left rare trees brought back by Portuguese navigators, and part of the original convent (from 1628) still survives, with the Baroque church preserved. Nearby are the chapels of the Via Sacra, the Cruz Alta, the Vale dos Fetos and the Fonte Fria, the last of these an artificial waterfall commissioned by D. Maria Pia de Saboia in the mid-nineteenth century. The forest was also the site of the Battle of Bussaco, on 27 September 1810, when Anglo-Portuguese troops led by Wellington defeated the Napoleonic forces. Wellington spent the night in the convent.
the whole scene
- original commission by D. Carlos I as a royal hunting lodge and summer palace
- neo-Manueline project by Luigi Manini (same as Regaleira), construction 1888-1907
- decoration with azulejos by Jorge Colaço and paintings by Ramalho, Carlos Reis and João Vaz
- set within the Mata do Buçaco (105 ha), with a 1628 Carmelite convent alongside
- National Monument since 2018
