The gardens of Regaleira
Sintra, Portugal
Sintra Parks Monte da Lua, Conservation Company
About Manor and Gardens of Regaleira, Sintra
Parques de Sintra – Monte da Lua, S.A
1899–1913
This Romantic estate formerly belonging to the Viscondessa of Regaleira, was acquired and enlarged by António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro (1848–1920) as his favourite country estate. His vast fortune earned him the nickname of Monteiro dos Milhões, (Moneybags Monteiro). He was inspired by the Garden of the Desert de Retz in Marly; Torrigiani Garden in Florence amongst others.
As an image of the Cosmos, the gardens of Regaleira are revealed to the visitors through the sucession of magic and mysterious places. A Paradise Lost coexists in these scenographic representations with a mundus inferus – a Dantesque underground world – through which the candidate is guided by his intuition. The various scenes offer a concrete representation of an initiation journey, like a pilgrimage through a symbolic garden in which one can feel the Harmony of the Spheres and the vertical alignment of the consciousness, in analogy with the Quest for the Supreme Being found in the great Epics.
References abound in these realms to the worlds of classical mythology, to Virgil, Dante, Milton and Camões, to the Templar-like mission of the Order of Christ and to the enigmas of the alchemical Ars Magna.
"The gardens of Regaleira" in "Sharing History", Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://sharinghistory.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=monument;AWE;pt;16;en
MWNF Working Number: PT 023