Palácio de São Bento: From Monastery to Parliament
Why is it significant?
Stop at the foot of the long staircase and take in the whole white façade: columns, a triangular pediment full of sculpture, and stone lions guarding the steps. It looks like a temple of state built in one confident gesture. In fact it is a monastery wearing a costume.
Key Facts
| Place | Palácio de São Bento: From Monastery to Parliament |
|---|---|
| Address | Palácio de São Bento, 1249-068 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.71240, -9.15350 |
| Part of Walk | Lisbon's Garden Hills: Aqueduct Water, Giant Trees & the Estrela Basilica |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop at the foot of the long staircase and take in the whole white façade: columns, a triangular pediment full of sculpture, and stone lions guarding the steps. It looks like a temple of state built in one confident gesture. In fact it is a monastery wearing a costume.
Building began here in 1598 for the Benedictine monks of São Bento da Saúde, Saint Benedict of Health, and for more than two centuries this was a place of prayer, silence and gardens. Then, in 1834, after a civil war, Portugal abolished its male religious orders. The monks left, and in the very same year the new constitutional parliament moved into their cloisters.
So the deputies of liberal Portugal literally debated inside a monastery. After a fire in 1895 destroyed the old chamber, the architect Miguel Ventura Terra built a new one, and in the twentieth century the building received the grand neoclassical front you see now. Behind it, the monks' old gardens survive around the official residence of the prime minister.
During the Estado Novo dictatorship, which lasted until 1974, a National Assembly met here, but it was a stage set. Opposition parties were banned, censorship was everywhere and the political police arrested critics. After the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974, Portugal's first free elections in half a century chose a Constituent Assembly, and on 2 April 1976 the new democratic constitution was approved in this building, the text that still governs Portugal today.
Look at the lions once more. They have watched kings' ministers, dictators' deputies and, today, protests on the steps... and they still look slightly bored. Now turn west and climb Calçada da Estrela, the steep street with the tram rails. It is a real uphill pull of about ten minutes, but at the top a white dome is waiting for you.