Quinta da Regaleira

Quinta da Regaleira is an estate on the edge of the historic centre of Sintra, Portugal, shaped in the early 20th century by António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro, a wealthy Brazilian-born coffee and gem merchant. Between 1904 and 1910 he engaged the Italian architect and stage designer Luigi Manini to create a residence and park filled with symbolism drawn from Freemasonry, alchemy, the Knights Templar, and Rosicrucian ideas. The main house is a neo-Manueline and Gothic palace of five floors, with turrets, gargoyles, a chapel decorated with carved stonework and mosaics, and rooms including the Hunting Room, the Billiards Room and the Music Room. The park, though, is the main draw. It contains two spiral wells, the Initiation Well, nine landings deep and about 27 metres, and the unfinished Unfinished Well, linked by tunnels and grottoes that emerge by lakes and waterfalls. Other features include a terraced garden, a Tower of the Gods, a Waterfall Lake and a Portal of the Guardians. The estate was sold after Carvalho Monteiro's death in 1920 and passed through several owners before the Sintra town council bought it in 1997. It was restored and opened to the public, and in 1995 the Sintra cultural landscape, which includes it, was inscribed by UNESCO. Interpretation relies on the architecture and landscape itself rather than a curated exhibition, with a mixture of free exploration and guided tours. Restoration of the palace interiors and masonry has been carried out in stages, and the stone and moss-covered paths remain in good condition though slippery in wet weather.