Reduced By Over $1.15M! Abandoned Palace ~ c.1800 Heritage Palace For Sale in Lisbon, Portugal

Heritage palace, Lisbon, Portugal: €6 million (£5.4m/$7.1m) – Reduced to $5,949,625 USD.

The Estate and its history

Abandoned Palace Quinta da Torre de Santo António das Gateiras, initially so-called as it is situated in the town of Gateiras, named after the abundance of wild cats in that area, was founded in the late seventeenth century.

Situated on a plateau in the countryside, the building stands alone on the hillside as an imposing architectural example, witnessing the various interventions it has undergone over the years and which have made it into the building that has reached our days, full of art history, as well as the marks left by its residents over the years. The construction of the first building in the same place dates, therefore, from the seventeenth century, commissioned by its first Morgado (1), the notorious legal consultant Manuel de Azevedo Pais. After ownership, including the plot of land, has passed through the hands of various owners, successive family inheritances and various transformations, which are not precisely documented, however, the building which had adopted the style of a chalet, with a built-in chapel, was sold to Alfredo Antas Lopes de Macedo was sold in 1876, a military man with a great career, who in turn sold it in 1880 to the then Count of Foz, Tristan Guedes of Queiroz Correia Castelo Branco, who later became the first Marquis of Foz.

The current buildings

The whole main building is a testimony to the various renovations that exalted the space with objects of art and decoration. Each architectural aspect and each piece tells a part of the history of this place and each of its occupants. In the interior, on the north side, stands the atrium that opens to the great hall. In the atrium, the pavement consists of edged neo-Mudéjar style tiles, the walls are covered with tapestries and the coffered ceiling decorated with painted swans. On one of its walls remains a canvas with the arms of the family. In the great hall, there is a marble and bronze stove, possibly of French origin and a tribune supported by marble columns. The dining room, on the garden side, has a neo-medieval wood-burning stove with a painted ceiling with vegetal motifs.

The staircase leading to the upper floors features baroque tile panels from the first half of the 18th century. On the upper floor, on the south side, the Manueline mullion windows stand out in two of the rooms; rococo style tiled floors in one of the corridors and a tiled bathroom in Art Nouveau, Sarreguemines manufacture. Both the tribune of the great hall and the steps of the stairs have bronze balustrades, possibly of French origin. From the furnishings, which were once highly praised, there are only left one golden bronze lamp with stained-glass windows, armorial wooden chairs, and a large framed canvas depicting the arms of the Marquis of Foz. The remaining furnishings, which included the collection of pieces from the Foz Palace, was mostly taken to auction in 1996. As an annexe, along the road, are the stables, with a plan of two rectangles attached and roofs of different heights, with attics.

Neo-Renaissance style ceramic tiles with the arms of the Marquis of Foz stand out, applied on the walls, as well as two beautiful glazed pottery high reliefs attributed to Bordalo Pinheiro, which represent the Annunciation to the Virgin and which were, somewhere in time, removed from the south façade of the house. The chapel is also a fine example of religious architecture. Located in the immediate vicinity of the palace, it has a Latin cross-shaped plant. The main façade has an angled gable, an axial portal with broken arch, archivolts and a rose window. On the back façade, the faceted apse has broken arched windows. There are also three-sided side facades with stepped buttresses, with broken archways. The interior of the chapel reveals an altar in wood, neogothic style, polychrome stained glass, and panelling decorated with angels and fleurs-de-lis framed by counter-curved arches. Contrary to what happened with the palace, the filling of the chapel remained until today, is possible to observe all the elements gathered by the first Marquis of Foz. At the altar, a wooden altarpiece presents to the visitor the image of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of the estate and the chapel. This image, with 1.10 meters of height and date of 1898, having been made in the Fábrica de Faianças of Caldas da Rainha, has the signature of Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro. The chapel also houses the plaster sculptures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Francis de Sales, brought from the chapel of the Foz Palace; and still a seventeenth-century image of Santa Paula of Rome, with the habit of the Order of St. Jerome. From the sculptures in the chapel stands the life-size image of the Lord of Passos, signed by Father João Crisóstomo dated 1767. The fact of having a face, hands and feet executed in a polychrome tin make this sculpture unique and a national reference.

The landscaping

The palace is surrounded by gardens and woods, whose organization has also been cared for by its successive owners, as they are an important aspect of the property valuation. The vegetation is made up of several native tree species – such as the Portuguese oak, holm oak, cork oak, olive tree, meadow pine and wild pine, ash, chestnut, black poplar, the alder and the willow, the latter on the banks of the watercourses; and Mediterranean species of shrubs such as the kermes oak, the arbutus, the pomegranate, the euphorbia, the rosemary, the honeysuckle creepers, sarsaparilla and aromatic herbs such as oregano, calamine, thyme, the gall of the earth (Centaurium erythraea). There are still two imposing cedars planted at the beginning of the path leading to the chapel and a giant cedar that is thought to have been planted at the time of the founding of the Morgado and which should be one of the oldest cedars in Portugal.