PALÁCIO DA AJUDA / LISBON / PORTUGAL.
The Royal
Treasure Museum arrives with much brilliance and tourism management
A new museum with crown jewels opens this week to the
public in a joint tourism and culture project. At its center is a vault that
holds more than 700 pieces and 18,000 diamonds.
Isabel Salema
(Text) and Daniel Rocha (Photography)
May 31, 2022,
22:21
It is not
difficult to imagine a script of a film 007 that passes by the new Royal
Treasure Museum in Lisbon, this Wednesday inaugurated at 18h by an entourage
that will include the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and Duarte
Pio de Bragança, heir to the House of Bragança and alleged pretender to the
Portuguese throne. It has one of the largest forts in the world, lots of gold
and diamonds in Brazil and a history with many adventures that includes a
stately theft of six jewels in a museum in The Hague never recovered.
It was the desire
to put locks on the door after the stolen house and the insurance of the jewels
received by Portugal that gave the kick-off so that this Thursday can open to
the public in the Palace of Help a new museum in Lisbon that will permanently
display 736 pieces, including the royal crown,
exactly 20 years after one of the most significant losses, symbolically
and materially, of Portuguese heritage in the 21st century, namely the largest
diamond in the collection.
Having this fabulous treasure stored in bank tellers for
decades was unworthy to all Portuguese"
José Alberto Ribeiro, director of the Royal Treasury
Museum
"Having this
fabulous treasure kept in bank boxes for decades was unworthy for all
Portuguese," José Alberto Ribeiro, director of the Royal Treasury Museum,
told PÚBLICO at the end of a guided tour of journalists this week.
To enter the
museum, visitors will have to pass a security check similar to that of
airports, unheard of in Portuguese museums, but common in Europe and the United
States. They arrive by elevator to the third floor to discover an exhibition
that is entirely shown inside a large golden vault. "These doors with five
tons each are not decorative. There is one at the entrance and another at the
exit and closing at the end of the day when the visit route ends", points
out the director.
The new building
and its vault, both completed in 2021, had already been visited a year ago by
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and António Costa, in a pre-inauguration to which
journalists were also invited, but which had not extended to the general public
who will now have the opportunity to see for the first time the interior of the
new wing of the Ajuda Palace.
High security
Security was
"one of the biggest challenges of the project" of architecture, again
remembered the Director General of Cultural Heritage, João Carlos Santos,
author of the design of the building that was used to finish the palace to the
west, unfinished 226 years ago. The architect never tire of underlining the unusual
size of the vault ("one of the largest in the world," the press
release writes: "It is 40 meters long by 10 meters wide by 10 meters high
where the exhibition develops on three distinct levels."
40 meters
long by 10 meters wide by 10 meters high, dimensions of
the vault where the exhibition develops on three levels
When the armored
doors are open, the entrance and exit in the museum box is protected by two
doors with bulletproof glass, through which a rigorous electronic counting of
visitors is made. "There can be no accounting flaws," says the
architect. "This high security," adds the director, extends to the 76
showcases that also have bulletproof glasses.
Already immersed
in the Lusco-fusco environment of the interior, we can easily glimpse the most
well-known and exceptional pieces of the collection: on the left, the crown
sent with the gold of Brazil by D. João VI; on the right, the diadem of the
bright stars of D. Maria Pia (wife of D. Luís), the emerald lade of D. Mariana
(sister of D. Maria Pia), the tobacco box of D. José. They were joined in a
loan that recently arrived from Switzerland, the sapphire and diamond tiara of
D. Maria II that the museum failed to get at an auction at Christie's last
year.
They are the
"top of the collection," the director told reporters. It is through
this nucleus that will pass mainly the history of the extraction of gold and
diamonds from Brazil – the collection has about 22,000 stones, 18,000 of which
are diamonds. These important monopolies of the Portuguese crown give rise to a
jewellery that is now defined by the presence of stones and not so much of
precious metals as gold and silver.
Shining further
into the background is another of the museum's highlights, the insignia of the
Order of the Golden Tosage, which D. João VI had made as prince regent and
whose authorship has just been revised in a recent investigation. New high
moment is reserved for the third level, almost just outside the vault, when we
come across a staging built around The Baixela Germain, commissioned by D. José
after the earthquake of 1755 "to the largest goldsmith in Paris",
says the director. It is a unique copy of "Rococo silver", of which
the museum has more than 400 pieces.
Men and women in
old regime clothing, introduced through a film made with actors of the Teatro
do Bolhão, talk at a table set for 24 people, in one of the aspects of
museography, which was in the hands of three different companies, which will
probably be more discussed. The exhibition also brought together pieces of the
rascal that belong to the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, but failed
to bring the center of the table that is exhibited permanently at the Louvre
Museum in Paris, because of the value of insurance. The French, however, have
already authorized a replica, says the director.
Crown life
The museology of
the permanent exhibition began to be thought six years ago by a team that
includes two museum conservatives, Manuela Santana and Teresa Maranhas, and three
external researchers, Inês Líbano Monteiro, Hugo Xavier and João Júlio Rumsey
Teixeira, in addition to the director. One of the most important references was
the Imperial Treasury of the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, the Imperial House of
Habsburg, but also looked at the exhibits of the jewels of the Royal House of
Denmark in the Castle of Rosenborg or the Residenz of Munich, the palace of the
kings of Bavaria.
"The Vienna
Treasury also has the royal apartments like us. [In the Ajuda Palace], there is
a whole complex linked to the royal family that began to be built in the 18th
century. Beside the royal crown, whose size shows that it was not designed to
be used, a rule of The House Bragança, are two mantles: one of the Old Regime,
which was last used in the acclaim ceremony of D. João VI in Brazil; another
already liberal made for King D. Luís, since what belonged to D. Pedro IV
disappeared.
The museum, which
has eleven nuclei in total, also shows the importance of collectors such as D.
Fernando and D. Luís, the voyages of the royal treasure, which include a risky
crossing of the Atlantic Ocean after the French invasions, one of the many
episodes of the "troubled life" of the royal treasure, comments José
Alberto Ribeiro. At the core of diplomatic offerings shines the gold of a cape
offered by Pope Pius VI when the firstborn son of the future D. João VI and D.
Carlota Joaquina, D. António Pio, who died a year after receiving it, at the
age of six, was born.
Unlike the Tower
of London, where the British crown jewels are, there will be no time limit to
visit the Royal Treasury Museum (open every day from 10am to 7pm). The
exhibition begins with a didactic chronology, showing the important moments
when the public has already had contact with the royal treasure, such as the
pioneering exhibition held in 1991 at the Ajuda Palace, but 400 of the pieces
will be shown for the first time, the director told PÚBLICO. It is also noted
here, in a chronology that begins in Afonso Henriques, that the National Museum
of Ancient Art holds pieces such as the Processional Cross of D. Sancho I or
the Custody of Belém, commissioned by D. Manuel I and made with the gold of
Quilôa, the latter considered the masterpiece of Portuguese goldsmithing. It is
to the Museum of Green Windows that will return about half of the pieces of
Baixela Germain finished the loan of one year.
If this loan will
have caused some tension between the two museums, more controversial was the
management model adopted for the new Royal Treasury Museum, mainly in its
relationship with the Palace of Aid. Presented as "a joint project"
between Tourism and Culture, which brings together the Ministry of Culture,
through the DGPC, the Lisbon City Council and the Lisbon Tourism Association
(ATL), in an investment of more than 31 million euros, which doubled the
initial budget, the Royal Treasury Museum was the project that has so far
received more money from the Lisbon Tourism Development Fund, fed by the tourist tax on overnight stays in
the city, Vítor Costa, director general of atl, told reporters.
"The
financial means gathered [came] from the state, from the remnant of the
insurance received by the theft of jewelry in the Netherlands, and this
represented 4.4 million euros. ATL, through a loan and equity, raised €9
million. The other 18 million were through Lisbon's tourism rates." The
Director-General added that only "operational management" will be in
the hands of ATL, in a concession that has a term of 20 years. "The
property remains in the State, of course, and the scientific management will be
of the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage. The director of the Palace of
Aid is simultaneously the director of the Royal Treasury Museum."
José Alberto
Ribeiro is, in fact, the "scientific director" of the new museum,
having as executive director Pedro Moreira, at ATL. For now, there is still no
joint ticket that gives access to the two equipment managed by the same
director.
tp.ocilbup@amelas.lebasi
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