MAFRA PALACE
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Palace of Mafra suggesting a visit more than interesting to observe the owls and falcons in its beautiful garden.
During thirteen years of work (1717-1730), more than fifty thousand workers participated in the realization of the palace of Mafra, following the megalomaniac plans of the German architect Friedrich Ludwig. First of all, you will admire the basilica made of pink, red, black and white marble, its vertiginous dome (70 m high), the six organs that inhabit it (one thinks of some concert), and the chapels that can be visited from the counter-alleyways. Outside, you will notice fourteen statues of saints with disproportionate hands. The visit itself begins with a central corridor that leads to the chapel: the slabs on which you walk are numbered tombs... which then lead to the pharmacy, and then to the hospital.
The convent. Franciscan monks' cells: a bed made of two wooden boards leaving a gap in the middle to "rest" the spine, a rudimentary desk and, on the floor, a sink. On the first floor, just after the hospital, the penitential room announces the color: a wooden bed with, halfway up, a skull; on the wall, the instruments themselves - whip, rope with the stone... Oh Jansenism! In the middle of the convent, a circular communal table with linked chairs. But the most surprising thing is the only painting in this bare room (there are few works of art and furniture in the palace, since most of them were taken away by Dom João VI and the royal family in 1799 before the French invasion). It represents a monk in penitence.
But quickly, let's go to the palace! That is to say, in this 250 m long avenue carved with pink and white marble, and which serves open rooms. In the middle of this real boulevard, on one side large windows give on the interior of the basilica; on the other side the windows of the palace open on the sea... Then it is the hunting room, decorated with trophies of deers and wild boars killed in the region, and furnished with chairs made only of wood and deer skins. The visit ends with the sublime and impressive library, one of the most important of its kind in Europe (40,000 volumes), discreetly baroque: a vertigo of Babel in the form of a cross. The main aisle is longer than that of the basilica itself!
In the garden of the palace you can admire owls and falcons. The Ambifalco association proposes to spend an hour in the skin of a falconer and thus to interact with these superb birds. A visit more than interesting in all its aspects
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Le joyau étant bien sur la bilbiothèque, gigantesque, a l'image du lieu mais que l'on ne peut malheureusement pas parcourir plus que sur quelques mètres !
The façade you guess how it is large but it is some is huge... is let go in the stairs mabre and the meanders of the various rooms. I loved the game room much where you preserved magnificent games such as billiards, games hair as well as the view of the interior of the basilica from the corridor of the palace. As for the cells: you would think you were in films such as the English patient.