Portugal 2016 05 06 Mafra: The Hunting Grounds, Palace and Monastery

Today was gloomy and damp, although we didn’t have to endure a downpour.  Our morning walk took us around a huge park protected by 21 km of walls, also known as the royal hunting grounds.  This was developed in the early 1700’s, and planted with native species of trees such as ash, Portuguese Oak and Cork Oak, as well as non-native Sycamore and Horse Chestnut.

The property was stocked with (as the brochure says) Red Dear and Fallow Dear as well as Wild Boar.  (The brochure also says “Come and listen to the deer and fallow deer “singing out” to each other at dawn and dusk:  the sounds of bellowing.)  (Side comment:  obviously there were two translators working on that brochure!  On the whole we are well-served in English by the Portuguese in large and small places.  Signs will have a translation, but not always, and the translation is still better than anything I could do in Portuguese!)

Our trail wound up and down over varied areas and gave us a decent morning walk of 9.5 km with 700 ft of ascent.  One of the neat sights were native “Umbrella Pines” showing their characteristic shape in the distance.

One of our group saw 2 fallow deer, but the rest of us were not similarly blessed.  Lunch was rather a desperate affair because the only place to sit was outdoors under a tent with no walls.  Tables and chairs near the sides got wet with the wind.  Also, there were at least 6945 young schoolchildren there having lunch (ok, maybe 100) and the noise level was deafening.

These kids had traveled through the grounds on a "Train" driven by a standard vehicle appropriately decorated. What I was unable to get was a picture of the "train cars" all labelled with a MacDonald's logo.

Just as we were packing up to leave, who come along but 2 wild boar, obviously looking for handouts.  Then, to the dismay of the teachers, they trotted into our lunch area and did a complete circuit before being chased away.  Nothing like a little wildlife to brighten up the day!

The afternoon was another mind-boggling palace visit.  Mafra Palace is relatively new, but managed to compete well on the matter of the grotesque.  Young king Yoao V vowed to build a new monastery and basilica for 13 Franciscan friars and work was commenced in 1717.  Wealth pouring in from the colony of Brazil proved sufficient means to hire 52,000 men to work on expanded plans, finishing with 880 rooms and 300 monk’s cells.

The palace is quite empty these days, for the royal family took all of its contents to Brazil.

There is some nice marble work in some areas, and painted ceilings, but none of the palace shows the loving attention to craftsmanship apparent in other palaces.  The monks had an infirmary set up with multiple rooms as below, but everything seemed quite dark.

The library, probably the most interesting area in the palace, contains richly carved Baroque bookcases and more than 40,000 volumes.

After all this extravagance, it was time to go back to the hotel, dry out, warm up and drink Portuguese wine and beer.  This was our last day of walking in Portugal, so there will be only one more post, within a couple of days, to review some of the highlights.

Thanks for looking in!