Palácio Nacional de Queluz

In the vicinity of both Sintra and Lisbon, the Royal Estate of Queluz stands out as a benchmark reference in the palatial architecture of the second half of the 18th century. Associated with periods of entertainment and festivity, the palace displays an intimate relationship with its gardens faced by all the main palace facades. In its life-size interiors, visitors may savour the ambiences of the Portuguese court of that period as well as the evolution in tastes over the 18th and 19th centuries, a period marked successively by the Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical styles, while also incorporating events of great historical relevance in the transition from the Ancien Régime to Liberalism.

The Palace of Queluz, built in 1747 on the orders of the future King Pedro III, was initially planned as a summer residence. A favoured place for the leisure and entertainment of the Royal Family, the palace would become a permanent residence from 1794 through to the departure for Brazil in 1807 following the Napoleonic invasion.

King João VI and the Court returned to Portugal in 1821 but Queluz would only again be inhabited with Queen Carlota Joaquina put into semi-exile there accompanied by her sister-in-law Maria Francisca Benedita, the "princess-widow," whose name is bestowed upon one wing of its apartments. Prince Miguel also resided at the Palace of Queluz as the absolutist king during the bloody period of fratricidal war that pitted him against Pedro, the first Emperor of Brazil and the first constitutional monarch of Portugal. Immediately after the liberal victory, Pedro died in the Don Quixote Room where he had been born. He was aged 35.