About forty kilometres north-west of Lisbon, the town of Mafra is dominated by one of Europe's most imposing buildings: the Palácio Nacional, a vast Baroque complex combining royal palace, basilica and convent. Since 2019 it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the Cerco garden and the Tapada hunting park. Mafra is an easy day trip from Lisbon or Sintra and pairs well with an afternoon by the sea in nearby Ericeira.
A royal vow
According to tradition, King John V vowed to build a convent for Franciscan friars if his queen, Maria Anna of Austria, gave him an heir. In 1711 their first daughter was born, and in 1717 work began under the German architect Johann Friedrich Ludwig, known in Portugal as Ludovice. The project grew with the wealth flowing from Brazil's gold mines: tens of thousands of workers laboured on the site and the basilica was consecrated in 1730, though work continued for years. Their toil is at the heart of José Saramago's novel Baltasar and Blimunda.
The palace
The limestone facade is about 220 metres long, with the basilica in the centre between two bell towers and two corner towers that housed the king's and queen's apartments, at opposite ends of the palace. The tour passes through a long series of royal rooms, kitchens, the friars' infirmary, the audience room and the curious hunting room, furnished with trophies and antlers.
The palace's jewel is the library, a great Rococo hall with a marble floor and wooden shelves holding about 36,000 antique volumes; a small colony of bats, which come out at night, helps protect the books from insects. The two towers hold the carillons, cast in Flanders, with almost a hundred bells, among the largest in the world; concerts are held on some Sundays. The basilica, clad in marbles of different colours, has a collection of statues by Italian sculptors and six organs that are sometimes played together.
The Tapada and around
Behind the palace stretches the Tapada Nacional de Mafra, the former royal hunting reserve, a large walled park of woods home to red deer, fallow deer and wild boar; you can explore it on foot, by bike, by little train or on horseback. Near Gradil there is a centre for the recovery of the Iberian wolf. In the village of Sobreiro, a few kilometres away, the sculptor and potter José Franco built a miniature village recreating rural Portuguese life of the past, with mills, workshops and a bakery selling bread with chouriço.
The municipality of Mafra also faces the Atlantic, with the beaches and waves of Ericeira, a magnet for surfers from around the world. Mafra is reached from Lisbon by bus from Campo Grande or by car in about 40 minutes; Sintra and Queluz are nearby.