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As I further moved into the Royal quarter on the upper floor I wasn't expecting to have to look up as often as I did, once for me most of the charm of those rooms was on the ceiling's paintings, the first one having been in Diana's Room, where the Goddess of the hunt with nymphs and satyrs, a creation by Cirilo Vokmer Machado who is said to have drawn his inspiration from a painting by Domenichino The Hunt of Diana. Some of the subsequent murals were ordered by the King so as to replace some of the tapestries, which initially covered the walls of the Palace. one of those (a tapestry in wool and silk depicting Alexander receiving Thalestris Queen of the Amazons) could still be seen on a wall on the left side.
I then moved onto the Throne's room whose ceiling, by the same artist, was even more beautiful than the previous one. The pictures designed on the walls (by Domingos António Sequeira) looked as if they could come out of them at any moment and I must confess the whole atmosphere was mesmerising.
From it I walked into the Royal appartments via a Chapel Corridor, an Antechamber and the Dressing Room but it was the mahogany and bronze gondola-shaped bed in the Royal bedroom that really drew my attention.
(To be continued)
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