Junqueira

From the deck of the steamer sailing towards Cascais, the nineteenth-century passenger glimpses the majestic line of the northern bank of the Tagus. To the left appear the palaces of Junqueira, gravemente enfileirados(gravely lined up) with their gardens of palms and araucarias; further ahead stands out the small round observatory of Tapada da Ajuda.

By 10 Jan 2026

To the west rises the grande e pesado palácio de D. João VI(large and heavy palace of King João VI") – the Ajuda Palace – born from the ashes of the Royal Barrack that a fire had consumed in 1794, when Queen Maria I still lived there. This neoclassical palace, designed by Fabri and Costa e Silva from 1802 onwards, would never be completed, being interrupted by the French Invasions and the transfer of the Court to Brazil. To the east, on the hilltop, the ciprestes imóveis dos Prazeres(motionless cypresses of Prazeres)" rise like silent sentinels over the city of the dead.

Ramalho's description is simultaneously panoramic and symbolic. The writer does not limit himself to cataloguing buildings: he draws a moral geography of Lisbon. The aristocratic palaces, the scientific observatory, the unfinished royal palace and the cemetery compose a portrait of the city between glory and melancholy. The reference to the palace devorado pelas chamas(devoured by flames) and to the cemetery as a "dead city" introduces an elegiac note: this Lisbon that Ramalho observes from the steamer is already a city haunted by the past, where the symbols of power coexist with the signs of decadence and mortality. The contrast between the movement of the modernising steamer and the immobility of the funerary cypresses is eloquent.

Today, the visitor who retraces this journey will find the Ajuda Palace transformed into a museum since 1968, with its collections of decorative arts and the recent Royal Treasury Museum inaugurated in 2022 in the finally completed western wing. The Prazeres Cemetery maintains its cypresses and nineteenth-century tombs, silent witness to generations. Observing this landscape with "Ramalho's eyes", one can reflect on how the boat journey documented not only the geographical route but also the temporal journey of a nation: from Manueline glories to the unfinished palaces of the nineteenth century, from life to death, from movement to immobility.