The history of Mealhada

A convent became a king's hunting palace, then a hotel

The Palácio Hotel do Buçaco stands in the middle of a forest, built from pale stone carved with ropes, shells, and sea monsters. Its towers echo the Jerónimos Monastery and Belém Tower in Lisbon, four hundred years younger than the stones they imitate.

Before any of that carving existed, this was a convent. In 1628, Discalced Carmelites settled here and built the Convento de Santa Cruz do Buçaco. The monks planted a garden meant to represent Mount Carmel and the Garden of Eden, filling the hillside with trees from across the world. Late in the 1600s they added a trail of small chapels through the woods, a Via Crucis showing the suffering of Christ, step by step up the slope.

In September 1810, the convent gave shelter to a soldier. Viscount Wellington, the British commander later known as the Duke of Wellington, spent a night here after the Battle of Bussaco, when his army beat Napoleon's troops in the hills nearby. A plaque at the old convent entrance still marks it.

The Carmelites did not stay much longer. In 1834, Portugal dissolved its religious orders, and the monks left Buçaco for good. Part of their church, with its old Baroque altarpieces, still stands beside the palace today. The convent's garden survived them, too, growing wilder and older while the land waited for its next owner.

Late in the 1800s, Portugal's government looked at the old convent land and thought of a queen. Officials planned a royal residence here for Queen Maria Pia, wife of King Luís I. Political troubles got in the way, and the plan changed course. The government built a hunting retreat for her son, King Charles I.

The architect was Luigi Manini, an Italian stage designer who had spent years painting scenery for the opera house in Lisbon. Workers pulled down the convent's old dining hall, kitchen and library to clear the ground, laying the foundation stone in 1885. Three more architects carried the work on after Manini: Nicola Bigaglia, José Alexandre Soares, and Manuel Joaquim Norte Júnior, who added the Casa dos Brasões annex in 1905.

Construction ran from 1888 to 1907, nearly twenty years, and for most of that time it was the biggest employer in the region. Builders faced the palace in pale limestone, sandstone from nearby Ançã, and marble brought from Vila Viçosa. The government hired some of Portugal's best painters and sculptors of the day, among them António Ramalho, Carlos Reis, João Vaz and the tile painter Jorge Colaço. Colaço covered the walls in azulejo panels showing scenes from Os Lusíadas and the Battle of Bussaco fought in the forest outside.

In 1908, King Charles I was shot and killed in Lisbon, and Portugal's monarchy collapsed soon after. The palace that had been built as his hunting retreat never really served that purpose. The new Republic had little use for a royal hideaway, and the building stood idle for a few years.

The palace found a new life as a hotel. The Palace Hotel do Buçaco opened to guests, and in the 1920s the hotelier Alexandre de Almeida took it over, remodeling its interiors and adding to the building. The frescoes, carved stone and tiled walls that had been built for a king now welcomed paying visitors instead.

The hotel became a fashionable stop for travelers through the twentieth century. British Prime Minister Anthony Eden is said to have honeymooned here with his wife. The rooms kept their antique furniture and paintings from the building days, and the long azulejo panels by Jorge Colaço still run down the corridors, telling the story of Portugal's voyages of discovery in blue and white tile.

In 1996, Portugal listed the building as a Property of Public Interest. In 2018, the government went further, naming the Palácio Hotel do Buçaco a national monument, recognizing both the palace and the older convent ruins beside it, including the chapel with its Baroque altarpieces.

You can still book a room here, step through the Neo-Manueline doorways carved with ropes and sea monsters, and walk out into the forest the Carmelite monks first planted four centuries ago. The old convent church stands a few steps from the hotel entrance, its Baroque altarpieces intact, a quieter neighbor to the palace that replaced almost everything else the monks built.