Greenhouses of the Botanical Garden, Queluz National Palace (Jardim das Estufas)

The botanical garden of Queluz Palace was laid out between 1769 and 1780, during the great Baroque-Rococo campaign on the royal gardens. It was also known as the "Jardim das Estufas", the garden of the greenhouses: in the reign of Pedro III pineapples, a fruit greatly prized by the royal family and served at the Queluz banquets, were grown here. Small by the standards of contemporary botanical gardens, it was as much a place of pleasure as of science; an inventory of 1789 lists 198 species.

Altered in the nineteenth century, then repeatedly damaged by natural events and neglected, the garden became a rose garden in 1940. After severe flooding in 1983–84 it was dismantled and turned into a riding arena for the Portuguese School of Equestrian Art.

In 2012 Parques de Sintra, the public company that manages the palace, began historical research and archaeological surveys, which uncovered the foundations of the greenhouses, the central pool and pieces of statuary; the historian Denise Pereira da Silva drew in particular on nineteenth-century agricultural journals. The building works themselves took just over a year, and the garden reopened on 5 June 2017. The cost is given as 815,000 euros, whereas the press had earlier reported 600,000 euros. In 2018 the project received two European Union Prizes for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards, in the Conservation category and the Public Choice award.

The garden, of about 2,710 m², is laid out symmetrically around the four greenhouses, with a central pool, busts, statues and panels of azulejo tiles. The present greenhouses, built of iron and glass, were reconstructed from an interpretation of historical drawings, the results of the excavations and current building standards, supported by old photographs and written descriptions.

Their bases reuse original dressed stone. Scattered across the sixteen-hectare estate, the blocks were gathered in a large stone yard and then fitted back together like a jigsaw on the foundations identified in early 2016. The tops of the houses can be seen from the IC19 expressway.

Inside, the temperature reaches close to 40 °C. Dishes of water create tropical humidity through condensation, while a bed of oak bark gives off heat around the pineapples. The works also restored balustrades, benches, painted tiles, the ornamental fountain and the central pool, and equipped the garden with new drainage and water-supply systems.

The greenhouses hold pineapples at different stages of growth; the project planned to build up around two hundred plants as stock for propagation. This was the crop for which the garden was known in the eighteenth century, and it has been reinstated on the basis of historical sources.

Around the houses, the central beds, planted in a scientific and orderly manner, display a collection drawn from the four corners of the world. The garden now holds 144 species: 78 appear in the 1789 inventory and a further 66 are documented in other records. The beds follow Linnaeus's system of classification; in 2017 the press reported that twenty-two of its twenty-four classes would be represented.

The botanical garden lies within the gardens of Queluz National Palace, managed by Parques de Sintra, and is included in the palace-and-gardens ticket. Half an hour is enough to see it, but it is best taken as part of a full visit to the estate, which also includes the Lago das Conchas and the Grande Cascata.

Pineapples grow under glass all year round; in spring and summer the Linnaean beds and the restored statues around the central pool present the garden at its fullest.