Palácio dos Duques de Bragança

The Palácio dos Duques de Bragança was built in the 1420s by Afonso, illegitimate son of King João I and first Duke of Braganza, modeled loosely on French manor houses he had seen while campaigning abroad, giving it an unusual profile among Portuguese palaces with its steep pitched roofs and 39 tall chimneys. The Braganza family relocated its main residence to Vila Viçosa in the 16th century, after which the Guimarães palace fell into disrepair and was used variously as a barracks and military storehouse through the 18th and 19th centuries. A major restoration was carried out between 1937 and 1959 under the Estado Novo regime, which rebuilt roof timbers, reglazed windows, and refurnished the halls with period tapestries, furniture, ceramics, and armor gathered from other national collections to recreate a plausible noble interior rather than restore an original one, since almost nothing of the medieval furnishings had survived. The palace has served since 1938 as an official residence used occasionally by the President of the Republic for state ceremonies and receptions, and visitors move through a sequence of reception rooms, a banqueting hall with a chestnut-beamed ceiling, a chapel, and private chambers presented in roughly chronological order from the ground-floor service areas to the noble floor above. The building sits immediately beside Guimarães Castle within the city's UNESCO-listed historic centre, and its Gothic-Renaissance transitional architecture is considered one of the best surviving examples of early 15th-century Portuguese aristocratic construction.