Palácio dos Condes de Anadia

The complex occupies a fully walled estate made up of a principal manor house, an attached chapel, historic gardens, working agricultural plots and an eighteenth‑century planted woodland. The enclosure preserves the original perimeter, linking residence, service buildings and landscape into a single, coherent whole. The overall layout emphasizes a formal house set within a managed park and cultivated fields connected by planned avenues and boxwood-lined walks.

The manor house presents balanced, symmetrical façades inspired by Nasonian models, with a prominent west face organized around a central entrance topped by a balcony and the family coat of arms. The main frontage is articulated by shallow pilasters and orderly rows of windows; the noble floor windows feature arched cornices with shell-shaped motifs. At the northern end of this primary façade the palace chapel is integrated into the building’s front.

On the south side a broad double semicircular exterior stair climbs to a raised loggia that opens above the courtyard. The loggia is formed by a sequence of lowered arches with a balustraded railing and a painted wooden ceiling decorated in Baroque motifs. That elevation closes a courtyard sheltered by the enclosing wall and an entrance gate, while a low range of service buildings runs along the courtyard to house stores, a wine cellar, a press and other estate support functions.

The chapel of Saint Bernard, aligned with the main façade, has an entrance with a pediment, a large window above and a straight parapet finish. Its principal altarpiece dates to the early‑ to mid‑eighteenth century and underwent a major restoration in 1730 by a Porto carver, with later modifications in 1790 and further improvements between 1812 and 1819 that included commissioning a new painted depiction of Saint Bernard to replace an earlier carved image. Work in 1824 may have involved an architect from the region. The altarpiece survives in its original form and the chapel’s stuccoed ceiling shows decorative affinities with the style associated with the Italian atelier of Luigi Chiari.

Interior decoration retains high-quality tile panels and painted schemes. The atrium and grand staircase are lined with tile work dated to 1740, produced by the Coimbra school and drawing iconography from a late-seventeenth-century pictorial model. The Noble Hall, contemporaneous with those panels, displays scenes representing the four known continents of the period and the four classical elements personified by Roman deities. The ballroom contains tile panels made around 1770 by the same Coimbra workshop on the allegorical theme often called “World Upside Down.”

Furniture and movable collections remain part of the house’s fabric. Paintings and prints hang in reception rooms; a dining table in the Noble Hall includes a marble-inlay top produced in 1673. The music room contains furniture decorated in a Chinese-influenced style, and the collection includes eighteenth‑century biscuit porcelain figures copied after antiquities brought from Herculaneum and Pompeii. A costume assemblage preserves garments dating from the eighteenth century through the late nineteenth century.

The garden and adjacent cultivated lands combine ornamental and productive functions. The formal garden lies somewhat apart from the house and is reached by tree-lined avenues and boxwood paths; alleys of clipped boxwood mark out fields and plots. Small kitchen gardens, orchards and vineyard terraces are arranged to serve both leisure and agricultural needs. The wooded area, planted in the eighteenth century, contains ancient oak trees and once supported a deer population. Within the woods stand an obelisk set up after the Peninsular War, a small lake, an open pala field, a pet cemetery and a modest hermitage known locally as the Convent of the Friars.