Day 6 (15 March): Mafra

In 33 days, we will wake up in Tim and Carmen’s house. We can expect it to be 13°C, possibly one of the warmest top temps of the trip! Mafra is known for its UNESCO World Heritage Site - the Mafra National Palace. Apparently it’s a great example of Baroque architecture. It’s got over 1200 rooms and more than 150 flights of stairs. Is today the day we visit the palace, which is also a convent, a library, a basilica and a bell tower…?

The Mafra National Palace

Building of the palace started in 1717 and took 13 years, with up to 45,000 workers as any one time. Although, it wasn’t finally finished until 1755 - luckily, because the workforce was then needed to rebuild Lisbon after the Great Earthquake. I can find no reports of damage to the palace during the quake.

The magnitude 7.7 earthquake of 1755 had its epicentre 290km southwest of Lisbon, in the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, 30,000-40,000 people died in Lisbon. Morocco was also affected with large loss of life there too. It was the third large scale earthquake to impact Lisbon (the other two in 1332 and 1531) - but this one kicked off the birth of modern seismology and earthquake engineering.