Recreation of the bed of Pedro IC of Portugal, I of Brazil (1798-1834)
The state bed in which Pedro IV of Portugal, the first Emperor of Brazil, died in the Dom Quixote Room of the National Palace of Queluz — the very room where he had been born 35 years earlier — is more than just a piece of furniture: it marks the end of the Ancien Régime and the beginning of Liberalism in Portugal. Its return to this room enriches the museum narrative of the palace, allowing visitors to read the space as one infused with the memory of a figure indelibly linked to the history of Queluz, of Portugal, and of Brazil.
The historically informed recreation of this state bed required in-depth research followed by a meticulous process involving skilled woodworking and textile artisans. Their contribution ensured the closest possible approximation to the original piece, using the same type of wood and the same fabrics described in the inventories studied.
It is a project that falls within one of the three guiding principles that shape the work of Parques de Sintra – a distinctive cultural and tourism offer that enriches the visitor experience and authentically enhances heritage – and demonstrates how historical research, conservation, and traditional craftsmanship can restore essential pieces of our shared memory.
A Historic Relic Lost and Now Revived
On the night of 4–5 October 1934, as restoration works were under way to prepare the Palace of Queluz for permanent public opening, a fire broke out that severely damaged part of the building, particularly the wing containing the Dom Quixote Room. Although much of the palace’s furniture was saved, Pedro IV’s bed was lost. It was replaced with another canopy bed from the former royal collections, which remained in situ until 2025.
In 2022, the symbolic value of this piece prompted Parques de Sintra to launch a research project to bring back to life the deathbed of the Soldier King. Surviving iconography — Ferdinand le Feubure’s 1850 watercolour and contemporary photographs — provided invaluable information on the wooden structure and textile components, including the bedspread, upholstered headboard and canopy with its decorative fringe. Inventories compiled after Pedro IV’s death (1851, c. 1874, 1908–1910) offered further crucial details on materials: the hawthorn wood of the bed, the blue damask silk bedspread, and the white muslin canopy embroidered and finished with green and white tasselled fringe. Two of these inventories even recorded dimensions of certain textile elements, an asset for the reconstruction project.
Given the specific demands of such a piece of furniture, the Parques de Sintra conservators divided the work into two strands. The hawthorn wood structure described in the inventories was entrusted to a cabinetmaker specialised in classical furniture, who produced technical drawings and executed the piece. Meanwhile, a workshop of seamstresses and decorators undertook the textile elements, reproducing with precision the visual and descriptive evidence available, using the same types of fabric mentioned in the inventories.
The result of this endeavour is now on display to visitors in the Dom Quixote Room of the National Palace of Queluz. Located in the wing of the royal private apartments built in the second half of the 18th century to the design of the French architect Jean Baptiste Robillion, the room is adorned with Rococo and Neoclassical details and owes its name to the paintings depicting scenes from the life of Cervantes’s Don Quixote that decorate its cornice and overdoors. The space has had different uses over time, but it is the memory of Pedro IV’s death that endures to this day.
The Death of Pedro IV — the Political Act that Ended the Ancien Régime
In 1834, gravely ill, Pedro de Alcântara — former King of Portugal and first Emperor of Brazil — chose the Dom Quixote Room of the Palace of Queluz as the setting for his death and for his final political act. Having triumphed in the civil war against the Absolutists led by his brother Miguel, he had established Liberalism in Portugal. Yet at the moment of departing this world, he strategically asked to be taken to the bastion of the old order, where he had been born. At his side in his last moments were his wife, Amélie of Leuchtenberg; his young daughter Queen Maria II; Princess Maria Amélia; the Dukes of Terceira and Saldanha; aides-de-camp; personal servants; and his confessor, Father Marcos.
The purpose behind this decision — as we understand today — was fully achieved: with his passing, he definitively closed the chapter of Absolutism in Portugal’s history and bound his memory so closely to Queluz that the palace was never the same again. The Dom Quixote Room became a kind of sanctuary, and the state bed on which he breathed his last acquired deep symbolic meaning and was preserved as a historic relic.
The new regime sought to safeguard the legacy of Pedro IV as the “liberator” of the nation. The Dom Quixote Room therefore retained the appearance of a bedchamber conferred upon it in 1834, dominated by the same bed, and was never again used by later monarchs, who chose to keep their distance from Queluz.
The site was noted in the writings of several distinguished visitors to Portugal, including Prince Felix Lichnowsky of Prussia and the Englishwoman Dora Wordsworth. Yet the most moving description was left by Princess Maria Amélia, Pedro IV’s youngest daughter, who also died young of tuberculosis. In a letter dated 27 August 1851, recalling a visit to Queluz, she wrote:
"After my father’s death, I never saw that palace again. I remembered nothing at all, absolutely nothing, except the room where my father died!… There, I remembered everything. Every object is engraved on my memory, although at the time I was only three years old! I entered that room with great emotion!… The bed… the bed is still the same, in the same place, with the same curtains; there are the same bedspreads, the same pillows… all well preserved… Ah…"
