Quinta da Regaleira: How one billionaire's obsession became mine, too
Secret tunnels, symbols, virgins, freemasonry, grottoes and mythology: part one
This is part one of a very true story that has had me fixated for almost two years. I have nearly had it commissioned a handful of times, but nobody wants to touch it, so: here it is.
There is no appropriate way to begin a story that features anyone saying: “so he ran some kind of sex cult here, right?”. So we’ll begin like this.
The first time I visited Quinta da Regaleira, a palace and gardens in the mountains of Portugal, I was asleep. When researching places to visit near Lisbon, I found Sintra, a storybook-looking village dotted with colourful houses. Researching further, I came across an image of something called the “Initiation Well”. From above, it appears to be an endless, mossy spiral, not unlike something you might see in a Guillermo Del Toro film. I didn’t think about it again, but that night I found myself at the Initiation Well in one of my frequent vivid, violent, and occasionally prescient nightmares.
Two weeks later, after spending the day at a nearby beach, my body followed me to Sintra after my boyfriend and I were tired of tanning and swimming. Once there, we had two options: walk to what I thought was simply a botanical garden and house, or travel further to Pena Palace, a red and yellow castle high in the hills. Quinta da Regaleira was, simply, closer. It turned out to be a lot more than either a palace or a garden.
With hindsight, I realise that the symbolic sunwheels dotted along the path to the estate should have been a sign. On researching Sintra further, I found that the village itself was a hub for occult activity throughout its history; Roman Polanski’s thriller The Ninth Gate was set there, and noted occultists like Aleister Crowley were drawn to the area. It has a rich history of occultism, as well as associations with the Crusaders and Knights Templar, which is why billionaire and entomologist Carvalho Monteiro created his estate there: Quinta da Regaleira.
After paying just three euros to enter, we disappeared into sprawling land overlooked by a huge, Gothic, haunted mansion-looking house. The estate, made up of four hectares of dense forest and criss-crossing paths, is at first glance the UNESCO World Heritage Site it claims to be, if darker and more imposing than the pops of colour throughout the rest of Sintra. After taking some photos in the turret-like towers around the estate, we found a sign for the “Initiation Well” of my nightmares.
Ever curious, we climbed a seemingly endless path through the trees, eventually finding something that wasn’t really a well at all, but a subterranean tower with nine levels to echo Dante’s levels of hell. Looking down its mossy depths, we saw a large alchemical symbol at the bottom. Research revealed that the spacing of the landings are linked to Tarot mysticism and that the well was used for ceremonies that included “Tarot initiation rites”. There was no further information.
Frantic google searches as we walked, despite frequently fading service, found that Monteiro, billed by the estate as an “eccentric” and a “philanthropist”, developed the obsession with masonry and mythology that inspired the creation of the estate around the time he married his wife. Books in his house point to an interest in hermeticism and immortality, and the sensibilities of Quinta indicate an obsession with the Freemasons, a highly secret and controversial society. After his move to Quinta Da Regaleira, which he purchased in 1892, his wife is never mentioned again; he begins to build his vision of a temple to his beliefs with Italian architect and set designer Luigi Manini.
With that in mind, Monteiro’s obsession with mysticism and mythology became ever evident in the meticulous details of the estate, and I found myself fixated on every tiny symbol. Nobody knows exactly what took place at the Quinta da Regaleira, but its every corner seems fit for rites and ceremony. From the Initiation Well we went downwards, first finding a beautiful stone turret with what appeared to be an altar at its centre.
I learned that the garden is designed to reflect any number of meanings: if you start at the top, at the Initiation Well as we did, it can represent the journey to enlightenment. Going downwards is rich with symbolism, but lost on the densely wooded paths, a strange old man stopped us to ask if I was a journalist. I wasn’t there for work and had not mentioned my job to anyone. He was alone.
We found ourselves at the “Unfinished Well”, another subterranean tunnel, but this one inaccessible. The lack of overt symbolism didn’t make it any less unsettling, and looking down into its rugged interior didn’t bring any profound thoughts of heaven and hell, as the Initiation Well is intended to. Instead, it felt more like an abyss. Looking up, I saw a set of stairs that stopped abruptly above the endless hole below. Nothing in the gardens was an accident, and it was hard to imagine any purpose for stairs like that without picturing casting someone into the great, black hole. I stood at the top and looked downward, vertigo swirling. The abyss stared back.
Deeper into the estate, a signpost for a “Virgin’s Grotto” both turned my stomach and piqued my interest. The grotto itself wasn’t much: a small cave of rocks that looked like skulls, and in the centre, what could have been a stone table, but with the sacrificial naming of the cave itself, looked like another altar. I got out quickly.
All of these areas of the estate were almost less intriguing than the way they are connected. Labyrinthine tunnels built under the gardens, accessed via hidden entrances, seem endless, but at times bring you to the surface at meaningful points that seem farther or closer than you might expect. Many of the tunnels are lit, but many are not, and no one will prevent you from fully exploring. Stairs set in turrets took us deep down into the earth, and allegedly many of them lead to the “Sacred Mountain”, and the 90-foot-deep chamber at its core.
Many people refer to the estate and its creator as “eccentric” or “quirky”, and they aren’t wrong – but it’s a vast understatement. What to one visitor might seem fairytale can appear to have its roots in a darker mythology, depending on your perspective. Quinta da Regaleira lets the imagination run wild, and although the September sun had been beating down when we arrived, gloomy clouds started to gather over the estate and the mountains. The further we explored, the more the mood shifted, and we alternated between stunned silence and babbled attempts to find answers. There were, naturally, only ever more questions.
a cursed image
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