Monday 25th - the most peculiar house! (Patreon)

I promised I would share a few photos of Portugal this week - and this was one of the oddest places I have ever been.

It is called Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra. Sintra is outside of Lisbon in the lush hills where Portuguese royalty and aristocrats and other rich Portuguese built palaces to cool off in the summer.

The owner of this house  António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro was fascinated with masonic symbolism and also the Knights Templars and the whole house and garden reflects this. It was built at the beginning of the 19th century

The garden is full of follies and grottoes but the pinnacle is a 9-storey Masonic initiation well built into the ground. It is essentially a tower but built downwards rather than up! It leads to a labyrinth at the bottom.  I didn’t take a photo going down (lots of film though) but I purchased  this image looking down to show you as it has to be seen to be believed! The other two photos are ones I took though.

It is normally crowded with people but we went at the end of the day so at one point we had the tower and labyrinth to ourselves - pretty scary but so atmospheric, like another world!!