In Oeiras, located about 15 kilometres outside Lisbon and halfway between the capital and the cosmopolitan Estoril/Cascais area, lies the Palace of the Marquises of Pombal.

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Belonging to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, this typical 18th-century manor house was granted to the State in 1980 to house the National Institute for Administration which had been set up with the important brief of aiding the modernisation of the public sector through training, research and technical consultancy.

The palace was built in the 18th century by the Marquis of Pombal and Count of Oeiras, Sebastião José, a powerful minister of King José I.

Conceived as a summer residence and the heart of a vast agricultural complex, the installations combine the leisurely aspects of an aristocratic country residence with the pragmatism of a working farm. The waterfalls were to irrigate the gardens and the vegetable plots, the winery was decorated with busts of Roman emperors in Carrara marble, the stream which crosses the garden could be travelled by boat as far as the Tagus and vessels laden with full-bodied wine departed from its quays.

Nowadays, the Marquis's Estate, as it became known, has been transformed into a scientific campus housing a range of research institutions mostly in the fields of agriculture and biotechnology. Read more on the INA website...

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