The library and its bats
An eighty-eight metre hall, with bats living in it to protect the books from insects for centuries.
Alvesgaspar — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Boutroue, Alexandre (1846-1899). Chef de la mission. Auteur de la conférence. Photographe présumé Molteni. Photographe présumé — Public domain · Andrew Comings from Same, USA — CC BY 2.0 · Jules Verne Times Two — CC BY-SA 4.0
Yes. A colony lives behind the shelves and goes out at night to eat the insects that damage paper and leather, a protection system maintained for centuries. The furniture is covered at night and the floor cleaned each morning. You will not see them by day, but the staff explain them.
It is difficult. The Sintra palaces easily fill a whole day, and Mafra needs two to three hours plus travel. With two days, give one to each. With one day, choose: Sintra is better known and more varied, Mafra is larger, calmer and far less crowded.
By bus from Lisbon in about an hour, or by car. From Sintra the route is shorter but direct public transport is less regular. There is no train to Mafra itself, so bus or car are the options.
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A vast complex combining a royal palace, a monastery and a basilica under one roof, built in the eighteenth century on the orders of King João V and funded by the Brazilian gold then flowing into Portugal. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2019. The scale is the first thing that strikes you: a facade running about two hundred and twenty metres, more than a thousand rooms, and a built area that places it among the largest royal buildings in Europe. It went up in record time with the labour of tens of thousands of workers, and that history — the human and financial cost — is part of the story the place now tells. The library is the piece people come for: a hall some eighty-eight metres long holding tens of thousands of volumes, protected from insects by a colony of bats that lives in it and goes out to hunt at night — a working solution maintained for centuries, not a curiosity. The complex also holds two carillons of bells, among the largest surviving anywhere. Access from Lisbon is by bus or car in about an hour, and shorter from Sintra.
An eighty-eight metre hall, with bats living in it to protect the books from insects for centuries.
The colonial wealth that made this scale possible — and the human cost of building it.
Two sets among the largest surviving anywhere, still in the towers.
Mafra, about forty kilometres north-west of Lisbon