Besides these additions Dom Manoel made not a few changes in the older
part of the palace. The main door leading into the Sala dos Cysnes is of
his time, as is too a window in the upper passage leading to the chapel
gallery. Though the walls of the Sala das Duas Irmãs are probably older,
he altered it inside and built the two rows of columns and arches which
support the floor of the Sala dos Brazões above. The arches are round
and unmoulded. The thin columns are also round, but the bases are
eight-sided; so are the capitals, but with a round abacus of boughs and
twisted ribbons. The great hall above is also Dom Manoel's work, though
the ceiling may probably have been retouched since. His also are the
two-light windows, with slender shafts and heads more or less trefoil in
shape, but with many small convex curves in the middle. The lower part
of the outer cornice too is interesting, and made of brick plastered. At
the bottom is a large rope moulding, then three courses of tilelike
bricks set diagonally. Above them is a broad frieze divided into squares
by a round moulding; there are two rows of these squares, and in each is
an opening with a triangular head like a pigeon-hole, which has given
rise to the belief that it was added by the Marquez de Pombal after the
great earthquake. Pombal means 'dovecot,' and so it is supposed that the
marquis added a pigeon-house wherever he could. He may have built the
upper part of the cornice, which might belong to the eighteenth century,
but the lower part is certainly older.
The white marble door leading to the Sala dos Brazões from the upper
passage is part of Dom Manoel's work. It has a flat ogee head with round
projections which give it a roughly trefoil shape, and is framed in rope
mouldings of great size, which end above in three curious finials.
[Sidenote: Gollegã.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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