Ajuda Palace

The Real Barraca, 1761–1794

After the earthquake of 1 November 1755 destroyed the Ribeira Palace on the riverfront, José I refused to sleep under masonry again and had a palace of wood and canvas built on the Ajuda hill, the Real Barraca, completed on 20 September 1761. The court lived in it for three decades; it burned down in 1794. The Ajuda Botanical Garden below the palace, laid out in the 1760s, is the survivor of that first palace.

1796: Costa e Silva, Fabri and the neoclassical plan

Building of a permanent palace began on 19 May 1796 to a baroque design by Manuel Caetano de Sousa, the last of the Portuguese baroque architects, which the two Bolognese architects José da Costa e Silva and Francisco Xavier Fabri criticised and replaced in 1802 with the neoclassical scheme you see. Then the French invaded in 1807, the court sailed for Brazil, and the works slowed to nothing. The east and south wings and the courtyard were up by the mid-nineteenth century; the west wing never rose above its foundations, and the north front, meant to be the main one, was never begun.

The palace stood three-quarters built for a hundred and fifty years, which is the first thing you notice from the Largo da Ajuda: the façade stops.

1862–1910: Luís I and Maria Pia

Luís I made it the royal residence on his marriage to Maria Pia of Savoy in 1862, and the queen and the architect Possidónio da Silva turned the south side into the main entrance and fitted out the interiors in the taste of the 1860s and 1870s: the apartments, the throne room, the banqueting hall for ninety, the winter garden. Carlos I lived here too. On 5 October 1910 the republic was declared and the palace was closed with its contents in place; it opened as a museum in 1968 and has been used for state banquets since.

The rooms are a nineteenth-century royal household stopped in the act, and that, not architecture, is what you come for.

2021–2022: the west wing and the Royal Treasure Museum

The unfinished west wing was finally completed, in a plain stone that matches the old work without copying it, and on the ground floor Turismo de Lisboa opened the Museu do Tesouro Real in 2022: a vault of about a thousand pieces of the Portuguese crown's jewels, gold, silver and orders, kept in the palace's strongroom since 1910 and rarely shown. The two museums share a building and a hill and nothing else — different owners, different hours, different tickets.

Ground floor: Maria Pia's rooms

The route begins in the queen's private apartments — her bedroom, her boudoir, the pink room, the Saxe room lined with porcelain, the king's study with his desk and his collection of small things, the billiard room. The furniture, the fabrics and the ornaments are the ones the family used, and the labelling names which member of the household each room served. The winter garden with its palms and glass is at the centre of the wing.

First floor: throne room and banqueting hall

Up the main stair are the state rooms: the throne room under a painted ceiling, the ballroom, the sequence of reception rooms hung with the diplomatic gifts of a small monarchy, and the banqueting hall, the long table laid, which is still used for state dinners — when one is imminent the hall closes, and the MMP page will say so. The music room and the queen's chapel close the circuit. Allow ninety minutes; the rooms are many and the palace publishes no time.

The Royal Treasure Museum

A separate entrance on the Calçada da Ajuda side, a separate desk, a separate ticket. The vault is a single dark sequence: the crown of João VI of 1817, the sceptre, the insignia of the orders, the gold plate of the Brazilian court, the diamonds and the jewelled snuffboxes. It is small, dense and well lit, and forty-five minutes is enough.

The family ticket, €35 for two adults and two young people, and the €13 ticket with a public guided tour are the two options the plain €11 fare does not cover.

The lead-in names the sources; the table is the fare card. The Wednesday closure is the palace's alone: on a Wednesday the treasure is open, on a Monday the palace is open when the Belém monuments below are not, which makes Ajuda a good Monday. The palace's reductions follow the MMP site-wide rule and its free Sunday for visitors ended on 1 August 2024.

The Lisboa Card names the Royal Treasure Museum on its list of included entries; we did not find the palace itself on that list, and print that as our reading.

The palace is on the hill a kilometre north of the Jerónimos Monastery, and the walk up the Calçada da Ajuda is fifteen to twenty minutes of steady climb past the botanical garden. Carris bus 760 runs from Praça da Figueira through Belém to the Largo da Ajuda; onboard €2.30 (about $2.70), €1.72 with zapping, in the €7.25 day ticket. Tram 15E does not climb; get off at Belém (Museu Coches) and walk or change to the bus on Rua de Belém.

The palace entrance is on the Largo da Ajuda, the courtyard side; the treasure museum's door is round the corner on the Calçada da Ajuda in the new west wing. The getting around page explains the fares; the Belém page has the hill on the map.

It is the top of a Belém day, in both senses. The riverfront in the morning — monastery, pastries, tower — then the bus up the hill after lunch for the palace and the treasure, and the walk down past the botanical garden to the Coach Museum at 16:00. On a Monday reverse the emphasis: the palace and the treasure are open when the monuments below are shut, and with the Monument to the Discoveries and the MAAT they make a full Belém Monday.

On a Wednesday leave the palace out. The three-day plan gives Belém the afternoon this needs; the Belém page puts the hill on the map.