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Queluz: A rose pink palace in the French eighteenth-century style May 8, 2008

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The palace of QUELUZ, near Lisbon, is elegantly rustic in a way that is very characteristic of Portuguese life and manners. It has a seductive grace, for its muted beauty grows on the beholder gradually, until at length the splendours of a more conventionally royal building seem almost vulgar in comparison.

The rose-pink colour-washed facade is cunningly designed with two low semi-circular wings springing out from a small central block. The southern side ends in a black onion dome above the chapel, and goes on at right angles in a series of dependent buildings of different sizes. The northern wing now contains a luxury restaurant in the original kitchens of the palace.

Softly weathered stone surrounds the windows and forms the slightly decorated pediments and the flambeaux set at intervals on the simple balustrade above. The vast, roughly cobbled space in front has always been a public highway and there is not even a railing to conceal the interior. But this is so with almost all the great houses and palaces in Portugal, for they are seldom set within parks, and are usually right in the middle of towns or villages. Queluz itself has recently become one of Lisbon’s larger dormitory towns, but the palace, set in a slight hollow to the south-west on the way to Sintra, still seems remote, for the gardens and farmland behind also belong to the state, and in front there are only a few eighteenth-century houses and a strangely curved building where the royal servants were lodged.

Every major artistic movement in Europe reached Portugal a little late, as the country was, and in a way still is, cut off from the continent by the great land-mass of the traditional enemy, Spain. So it is not surprising that Queluz is one of the last great rococo buildings to be constructed in Europe.

Dom Pedro, son of the resplendent King John V, decided in 1747 to build a summer retreat in this secluded spot, which for over a hundred years had been the property of the second son of the reigning monarch. He called in Mateus Vicente de Oliveira who was soon joined by the Frenchman, Jean Baptiste Robillon. The latter was an extremely original designer, for his work under Ludwig of Ratisbon in the building of the gigantic classical convent-palace of Mafra, twenty years before, does not seem to have in any way affected the airy lightness of Queluz. His work is particularly notable in the garden facades and the interior decoration of the rooms.

A frenzy of activity, only broken by the necessity of sending a large number of the workmen to help in the rebuilding of Lisbon after the great earthquake of 1755, occupied the Prince and his architects. Fortunately the earthquake hardly affected the half-finished building. French artisans were sent for, stone came not only from the local quarries, but even from Genoa, wood was imported from Brazil, Denmark and Sweden, the ornamental marbles in the gardens were ordered from Italy and the lead statues were bought in England. Dr Ventura Porfirio, the curator, recently discovered that some of these are by John Cheere. There is a letter dated 1756 in the National Archives in Lisbon, signed by the then Portuguese Minister in London, Martinho de Melo, recording the purchase of ninety-eight lead figures for the sum of £871 17s. 1 d. That was after the arrival of Dutch gardeners under the direction of Gerald van den Kolk who carried out Jean Baptiste Robillon’s plans for the topiary gardens.

In 1760 Dom Pedro married his niece Dona Maria, who was heiress to the throne. They lived much in this palace, and later, when she had lost her husband in 1786, and become Queen, it was the scene of her attacks of insanity: her demented shrieks were heard by William Beckford during his visit to Queluz in 1794.

The interior of the palace is so light, elegant and beautifully furnished that the visitor feels that it could be lived in at any time; and this is indeed the case, for the Portuguese Government use Queluz for official entertaining.

Most of the rooms are quite small, with walls and ceilings painted in formal designs, the floors of polished red bricks, typically rustic and very cool in hot weather. One of the most original and exotic is the Sala das Mangas. It is long and narrow with windows on either side, for one of the peculiarities of Queluz is that it consists of a series of shallow one-storeyed wings of different sizes linked by higher pavilions. The whole room is lined with Chinoiserie glazed tiles, the azu/ejos so beloved of Portuguese builders, which the visitor soon learns to accept and gradually to delight in. These are polychrome with blue and yellow tones prevailing over pale green and plum colours. A pair of ladies in formal eighteenth-century dress, one holding a huge branch sprouting strange flowers, the other with a sheaf of corn, stand at either end, and Chinese figures and curious birds and beasts are also depicted in these cool glazed panels.

Travel Guidebook

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Queluz: A rose pink palace in the French eighteenth-century style

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