Quinta Da Regaleira | Most stunning Palace in Sintra | Portugal 🇵🇹

The Regaleira Palace is the largest building in and common name given to Quinta da Regaleira. Also known as "Palace of the Monteiro Millionaire", a reference to the surname of its former owner, António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro.

The house is located on the hillside, a short distance from Sintra’s Historic Centre, and classified as Property in the Public Interest since 2002.

With the aid of Italian architect Luigi Manini, Carvalho Monteiro transformed the 4 hectare estate into a palace surrounded by lush gardens, lakes, caves, and enigmatic constructions, places that hide alchemical meanings such as those evoked by Freemasonry, the Templars, and the Rose-cross. He shapes the space with mixed lines, evoking Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Manueline architecture.

Quinta da Regaleira must be experienced. It is not enough to hear about its memory, landscape and mysteries. You must get to know the estate, contemplate the scenery among the gardens and constructions, admire the Palace, a true philosophical mansion of alchemical inspiration, and walk through the exotic park and feel its spirit.

The Palace of Quinta da Regaleira was ordered constructed in the early decades of the 20th century by Carvalho Monteiro, who commissioned the Italian set designer Luigi Manini with his project. With a neo-Manueline revivalist look, it stands out for its decorative profusion. The leafy gardens, a three-dimensional scenery, are marked by wells, caves, lakes and pavilions that reveal the taste of Carvalho Monteiro, with abundant symbolic allusions, some of them of Masonic origin.

So much so that the inhabitants of Sintra came to refer to this unreal structure as ‘Wedding Cake’, standing not far from the King’s palace. Scenically, nothing like this had been seen before, so no comparisons were possible. It is true that various Romantic palaces such as Monserrate or Pena were works of art themselves, enchanting scholarly and illiterate people alike. However, the new estate of millionaire António Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro was something different. The end result featured several structures decorated in a revivalist style that left nobody indifferent.

To understand a little of the history of Quinta da Regaleira, we have to go back a few centuries, more precisely to the 17th century. The available documentation is scarce. Nonetheless, it is known that José Leite acquired an extensive plot on the outskirts of the town of Sintra in 1697, roughly corresponding to the current limits of the park. A few years later, in 1715, the estate was purchased at public auction by Francisco Alberto de Castro, and was named Quinta da Torre, or Quinta do Castro. The new owner introduced running water to the estate, from a spring on the Sintra Mountains.

In 1830, the estate belonged to Manuel Bernardo Lopes Fernandes and, in 1840, it became the property of Ermelinda Allen, the daughter of a wealthy trader from Porto, later graced with the title of Baroness of Regaleira. According to folklore, Quinta da Regaleira was thus named

because the view from one of the towers in the garden delighted [from the Portuguese regalar] the new owner.

However, Quinta da Regaleira was still far from what it would become at the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to a palace and a chapel, there are a number of other structures that present profuse revivalist decoration saturated with symbolic meaning.

In 1892, then Barons of Regaleira sold the property to the well-known Millionaire Monteiro: António Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1848, to Portuguese parents, he soon left Brazil for Portugal, where he read Law at the University of Coimbra. Owner of considerable wealth, he acquired the Sintra property to build a very special palace.

Carvalho Monteiro was a very cultured man. An undisputed lover of the national epic, he transposed the main symbols of the Portuguese nation into the decoration of his new palace, hearkening back to golden periods of Lusitanian history, which spanned various centuries. This gesture was manifested in his revivalist taste, featuring Manueline style ornamentation, possibly because this was one of Portugal's main moments of glory, when new paths to other parts of the globe were discovered. At the very least, this was a period which left behind an architectural legacy containing characteristically Portuguese decoration, today termed Manueline because it was created during the reign of the Well-Fortuned King.

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