Monte Palace Tropical Garden

Why go

The garden's history page says the estate goes back to the 18th century, when British consul Charles Murray turned the property around Monte Church into a leisure estate, that in 1897 Alfredo Guilherme Rodrigues built a palatial house there that was later turned into the Monte Palace Hotel, and that the garden began to take its present shape in 1987 under the art collector José Manuel Rodrigues Berardo. The operator describes plants from several continents, oriental gardens, a recreation of the Laurissilva forest and lakes with koi, and says the museum's ground floor shows minerals, gems and petrified wood while its two upper floors show modern and contemporary art from the Berardo Collection. Its visit page says the interior of the palace is not open to the public and lists three entrances: on Caminho das Babosas next to the cable car, a north entrance and an east entrance ('Entrada Beldevere'), and links to an online ticket office. This record is the garden with the museum inside it, not the palace building and not Monte Church nearby.