School Trip To Tourism Fair And Ajuda National Palace In Lisbon

On the 15th January 2010, the three classes attending the course of Tourism Technician and five teachers, went on a school trip to visit the “Ajuda”Palace and the B.T.L. ( Tourism Fair ).

In 1802, the project was entrusted to the Portuguese José da Costa e Silva and the Italian Francisco Xavier Fabri, who planned a magnificent building in the modern neoclassical style. In 1807, the Royal Family fled to Brazil due to the invasion of Portugal by the French troops. The lack of financial resources would cause the project to be greatly reduced in scale. The Palace became a permanent residence of the royal family during the reign of King Luís I and his wife, the Italian princess Maria Pia of Savoy. After the death of her husband, Queen Maria Pia continued to live in the palace until a military coup overthrew the monarchy in 1910. It is now a museum.

The “Ajuda” National Palace is square-shaped with a central courtyard. The West wing of the palace is still unfinished, while the East wing has two towers at the corners. The central part of the facade has a tympanum with the coat-of-arms of Portugal and an entrance hall with statues of the virtues by Joaquim Machado de Castro and his disciples dating from the early 19th century. The interiors were decorated by many important 19th century Portuguese artists.

BTL is the annual fair of tourism that occurs in Lisbon. It is divided into four blocks and filled with counters of every corner of Portugal and of various countries of the world.
Some presentations were much better than others, while a very few counters were actually pretty good presented, for example, the Japanese counter. With a large variety of information displayed, and very good videos which presented Japan in several aspects, this counter was one of the very few that was very well made. The Portuguese islands, Madeira and Azores, had lovely flower bunches to show us some samples of their variety of flora.

All students returned home with their bags full of information about the different regions of Portugal and some other countries. Although it was tiring, everybody loved it.

Japanese counter Fauna from Madeira

Ajuda National Palace - King’s throne Ajuda National Palace –

handpainted ceiling