Right before we left for our trip I told a bunch of friends about this blog. Our good friend Fred Daniels responded back that he had a contact in Lisbon that could give us a tour of the Palace of Ajuda. We said “sure, set it up!”
So we show up at the palace yesterday and Cristina, Fred’s friend, meets us in the reception area. Everybody in the place is treating her with the utmost in respect…..and that’s when we find out she is the curator of the palace, and has worked here for 30 years!
The history of this palace is pretty interesting. After the earthquake of 1755, King Joseph, who survived, decided that brick buildings were not for him. He built a huge wooden building so that if an earthquake struck he’d be impaled by shards of wood rather than buried under bricks and mortar. Ok, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my drift.
So King Joseph, he of the fear of bricks (also known as being buried alive), had a closet case of taphephobia (you have google, look it up). So King Joey dies in 1777 and his daughter Maria takes over and says “enough of this wooden house shit”. She had apparently read the Three Little Pigs as a child. So she starts building a real palace.
In the middle of building (1809 to be exact), a bunch of Frenchies under the direction of an imp named Napolean invade Portugal. The Royal family says “I can run faster than you can”, and promptly moves everybody to Brazil. The Frenchies find no royalty to force into submission, and head back to the land of heavily seasoned snails. Even in the absence of the Royal family, the construction of the palace continues. If only we had contractors like that today!
It wasn’t until 1862 that the latest Royals took up residence here. The queen, Maria Pia, was responsible for most of the interiors in the palace. Her husband, King Luis, gave her full control as long as he was allowed to smoke. She took advantage of that and made the palace her own.
They are still restoring the palace to this day, as we couldn’t go up to certain sections of the 2nd floor, but Cristina took us everywhere she could, even some spaces that were closed to the public that day. We saw one large crowd there taking a guided tour. Otherwise the place was empty, so if you want to avoid the crowds, this is a pretty cool spot to check out, particularly if it’s raining!
Odd that the two thrones look identical. You would think the Queen’s would be more demure? Maybe Maria Pia wore the pants in this kingdom?
This is the ball room, right off of the throne room (you can see the thrones in the background). Don’t ask me about the significance of Atlas holding up balls in the ballroom….I have no idea.
These are really cool pieces that I want! If anybody sees them for sale somewhere let me know! Particularly the moon sticking it’s tongue out!
I only got one photo of Cristina, and only from behind. I need to do a much better job of identifying the hosts of these adventures! This shot is of the winter room, where they would bring plants inside so they could enjoy them without freezing their butts off. That is a bird cage in the background.
Thank you to Cristina! Looking forward to your SF visit in February!
