Fronteira Palace (Palácio Fronteira)

Palace · BenficaLisbon,Portugal

A Lisbon hunting pavilion of 1671 still lived in by the family who built it, its tiled horsemen doubled in the water tank below.

Fronteira Palace is covered in tiles that carry the subject of each room rather than a pattern round the edges. The Battle Room is lined with panels of the war just ended, fought to take the crown back from Spain, painted in purple and blue with the marquis himself in the middle of the fighting. Outside, a formal garden runs down to a rectangular water tank. Above the water stands the Gallery of the Kings: busts of Portuguese monarchs in niches, and below them fourteen life-size tiled horsemen doubled in the reflection. Elsewhere there are monkeys playing instruments, cats, a grotto room, and benches tiled with animals. This is the largest set of seventeenth-century tiles still in the place they were made for, and they survive because the family never had to sell the house. João Mascarenhas, first Marquis of Fronteira, had the place built in 1671 and 1672 as a hunting pavilion outside the city, and his descendants have never left. It became the family's main house only later.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The inside opens only for a few short guided visits in the morning — and not at all when the family has an event on, so it is not a place you can simply turn up to.
Look at the tiles as paintings — manganese purple, cobalt blue and copper green, laid on like a palette, in the material a Portuguese house had closest at hand.
Come on a windless morning — the tank only doubles the gallery when the water is completely still, and any breeze at all breaks it up.
It is out past the zoo, well beyond the centre — this is a trip of its own rather than a stop on a walking day.

Things to do

1
Stand at the end of the water tank
Walk to the far end of the rectangular tank and look back. Fourteen life-size horsemen in tile stand in an arcade above the water, and busts of Portuguese kings sit in niches above them. On a still morning the whole gallery appears upside down in the water, which is the view the garden was designed to give.
2
See the war painted on the Battle Room walls
On the guided visit, work along the panels in order rather than standing back from them. The commanders are named, the ground is recognisable, and the marquis put himself in the middle of the fighting. A whole room was tiled to say which side this house had been on.
3
Look for the monkeys
In the garden and the smaller rooms, between the grand panels, there are tiled monkeys playing instruments, cats, and hunting scenes on the benches. The same workshops that painted the battles painted these too, which shows that in the 1670s tile was an everyday decoration as well as a way of making grand statements.