Hotels near Quinta da Regaleira

Quinta da Regaleira is the estate that Brazilian millionaire Antonio Augusto Carvalho Monteiro built between 1904 and 1910 with Italian architect Luigi Manini. The house itself is handsome enough. The gardens are the real draw: four hectares of grottoes, artificial lakes, stone towers and carved symbols tied to Freemasonry, the Knights Templar and alchemy.

The Initiation Well is the centrepiece - a 27-metre inverted tower with nine spiralling levels of stone steps dropping into a tunnel network that emerges beside a waterfall. Entry costs about 15 EUR and the site needs two hours to explore properly. Wear shoes with grip. The tunnel floors stay wet year-round and the worn granite gets genuinely slippery.

Pro Tip: Enter the Initiation Well from the lower tunnel rather than the top. The queue at the upper entrance regularly runs 20 minutes while the bottom approach is often empty, and climbing upward into the light makes for better photographs.