Bussaco Palace and Forest

About this place

Bussaco Palace is a Romantic palace in the Buçaco hills of central Portugal, in the municipality of Mealhada, about 20 km north of Coimbra in a straight line. It is a National Monument and today houses a luxury hotel in the middle of a dense forest. The land around it was once part of a Discalced Carmelite convent founded in 1628, whose monks planted a large garden with many kinds of trees. The monks left in 1834, and later in the century there were plans to make the convent a royal residence for Queen Maria Pia, before the decision was taken to build a hotel instead. The palace was built between 1888 and 1907, first to designs by the Italian architect Luigi Manini in the Neo-Manueline style, which recalls Portugal's 16th-century architecture and draws on the Jerónimos Monastery and Belém Tower in Lisbon. Its facades are covered in carved arches, slender turrets and dense stone ornament, with a formal garden of clipped hedges in front. Visitors walk around the palace and its gardens and follow the paths beneath the tall trees of the surrounding forest. The richly tiled and painted interior is mainly for hotel guests and diners, and the hills are cooler and often damp.