In the National Palace of Sintra, Portugal, it pays to look up…nowhere is it better to go birdwatching!
For fluttering above the visitor, is a flock of very English birds!
Two majestic painted ceilings : First ‘Swans Hall’ and then the more mysterious ‘Magpie Room’.
The royal palace was built in the reign of King João I (1357–1433) and Queen Philippa of Lancaster (1360–1415). The marriage of the Portuguese King to his English Queen cementing the great and ancient alliance between Portugal and England.
So, these crowned swans are thought to signal the power of the English throne, as the swan was an emblem used by the brother of Queen Philippa of Lancaster (1360–1415), Henry IV of England (1367–1413).
Now we step into the more intimate and mysterious ‘Magpie Room’, with its extraordinary flock of 136 magpies…
Immediately, we notice that these birds are chattering amongst themselves – ‘Por Bem’ (“For Good”) they say. But what, across the space of so many hundreds of years (this ceiling is the oldest in the Palace) are these birds really trying to tell us?
‘Por Bem’ was, in fact, the motto of King João I (1385–1433), meaning, at that time,“Willingly”, and the rose that each holds possibly alludes to the English House of Lancaster, to which Queen Philippa (1360–1415) belonged.
So, a private declaration of love? Possibly. And yet, ultimately, the private universe of this very public couple remains a mystery.
I have chosen to end with ‘Private Universe’ by the band Crowded House, a mysterious song somehow suited to this Letter’s avian theme:
‘Every night about six o’clock
Birds come back to the palm to talk
They talk to me, birds to talk to me
If I go down on my knees’
