From Real Barraca, the seat of State ceremonies since the II Constitutional Government

Whoever wants queens, pays for them”, exclaimed Queen D. Maria Pia, when a member of Her Majesty’s Government, more concerned with the balance of the Treasury, dared to question her about the excessive expenditure on tableware, grand pianos, chandeliers and canapés that she ordered in Paris or in her native Italy to make Palácio da Ajuda the home she had dreamed of. More than a century and a half later, there are no longer capricious Queens parading, in a train dress, through the corridors of the Palace, but it will be there that, today, once again, the new government will take office, thus continuing a tradition that began with the II Constitutional Government, on January 30, 1978.

In the First Republic, despite the anti-monarchical and anti-clerical rage that drove the nation’s political leaders, there was already an awareness that the former family home of the couple formed by D. Maria Pia and D. Luís and their children was the best Lisbon’s place for important state ceremonies, especially when visitors arrived here to impress those who wanted to impress. The noble floor, decorated by the expensive taste of the queen sent into exile together with her daughter-in-law and grandson, became the new regime’s favorite for official ceremonies. In addition to the inauguration of governments, in the D. João VI Room or in the Ambassadors’ room, this is where the New Year’s greetings session for the diplomatic corps accredited in Lisbon and the banquets offered to foreign heads of state are usually held.

And yet it all started with a tent – a real one, but a tent. Terrified by the destruction of Terreiro do Paço by the 1755 earthquake, King José I ordered the construction, in the western part of the city (less affected by the tragedy), of a new palace, without stonework or marble, but entirely in wood. The interior could have been sumptuous, but the people of Lisbon couldn’t resist calling it the unflattering epithet of Real Barraca. It burned on a cold night in 1794, in a fire that reduced everything to ashes. In desperation, the Royal House promised generous rewards to a small army of inmates if they found valuables in the still-smoldering ashes. And thus, some precious stones resurface, whose metallic setting had been melted by the fire.