This week our travels took us to
QUELUZ.
In Portugal near Lisbon you can find a lot of palaces and castles. The Palacio de Queluz is one of them.
It is often called the 'Portuguese Versailles'.
Portugal has had at least 40 kings and queens in its loooong history, so it's hard to keep all these people straight, but here's a little story about this palace and it's king and queen.
Queluz Palace was built in 1747 and was the royal residence for Queen D. Maria I and Dom Pedro. Despite the 17 year age gap and the fact that Dom Pedro III was Queen Maria’s Uncle, the marriage was a happy one.
They say that when Dom Pedro died in 1786, poor Queen Maria started to show signs of madness which escalated when her eldest sign José died from smallpox two years later. She was then confined to ‘Maria’s Pavilion’, away from public view but her crazed screams were heard throughout the Palace. Eventually, her younger son Joao took her to Brazil in 1807 when the French invaded Portugal.
Maria lived in Brazil for a total of eight years, always in a state of incapacitation. In 1816, she died at the Carmo Convent in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 81.
She was known as Maria the Pious in Portugal and Maria the Mad in Brazil,
Let the tour begin...
Poor poor Mad Maria....left alone for all those years! She might have been wishing the 17 year gap wasn't so big! So, are those real people or wax figures?? They sure look realistic if so!
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