Condes de Castro Guimarães Palace, Neo-Manueline palace in Cascais, Portugal.
The Condes de Castro Guimarães Palace is a Neo-Manueline building in Cascais, set directly along the Atlantic coast and shaped around an irregular plan that rises across several floors. Its facade features carved windows, stone gargoyles, and overhanging eaves, with covered porches opening toward the sea.
The building was constructed in 1900 by Jorge O'Neill as a private seaside residence known as Torre de São Sebastião. In 1910, Count Manuel de Castro Guimarães acquired the property and shaped it into something quite different, eventually bequeathing it to the town of Cascais.
The palace takes its name from Count Manuel de Castro Guimarães, who bought it in the early 20th century and used it as a family home. Visitors today can walk through rooms that still hold personal objects, furniture, and decorative pieces that reflect how the family lived day to day.
The palace sits on Avenida Rei Humberto II de Itália in Cascais and is easy to reach from the coastal road. Since the rooms spread across several floors and the grounds open onto the ocean, comfortable footwear is a good idea, and a light jacket may come in handy depending on the season.
Among the collection kept in the palace is a rare 1505 manuscript, the Chronicle of King Afonso Henriques, decorated with delicate miniature paintings by António d'Ollanda. This handwritten work is one of the oldest and most treasured items on display and shows the high skill of manuscript painting from that period.
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