Our Palace

In about 1800, Samual Taylor Coleridge wrote a famous poem that began "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree". The crowned heads of Europe then spent a century trying to outdo each other in the quest to turn the poet's imagination into reality. The Prince of Wales built the Brighton Pleasure Pavilion; Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria built Neuschwanstein. The same year that Ludwig finished his castle in the sky (1888), Carlos I of Portugal started his own stately pleasure palace – The Bussaco Palace. For his location, he chose a sylvan refuge where a medieval monastery and convent housed a private hunting reserve for the pope. For twenty years, it was the biggest construction project in the kingdom, employing thousands of laborers and artists. Upon completion in 1907, Carlos made arrangements to christen the Bussaco Palace in grand fashion. The planned festivities were great. Unfortunately for him, his timing was not. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to his subjects who, amidst the violence and unrest leading up to the Great War, assassinated Carlos I in February of 1908.

The Bussaco Palace sat vacant and unused until it was turned into a hotel in the years before the second world war. Portugal's neutrality during World War II, coupled with the Palace's romantic façade and remote location made Bussaco famous (or infamous) as a rendezvous place for spies, double agents, rich playboys and their female companions.

Today, it is Portugal's most famous and unique hotel. It has 62 rooms and we've taken them all for a week. When we told our plans to the current general manage of the hotel, Alberto Gradim, he became very excited and exclaimed: "This is exactly what the palace was built for!" And he has promised to support us in whatever extravagant concerts and parties we create.