‍❑ The Palácio Iglésias, better known as the Palácio das Belas Artes due to its location at the Largo da Belas Artes, n.2, and its proximity to the National Academy of Fine Arts, is a neoclassical building from 1859 located in central Lisbon, Portugal. 

*Spatial Palimpsest ◩

Designed by the Italian architect Giuseppe Cinatti (1808-1879), the palace was initially built as the main residence of the Iglésias, a family of businessmen, military representatives, and bankers. 

The building later served as the headquarters of two important governmental departments, being partially rented out to the General Directory for Livestock Farming in 1936 and later sold, in 1971, to the Portuguese State, housing the Ministry of Economy.

Its location, then and now, is central: it was surrounded by the Saint Francis Convent, which later housed the National Library, the Academy of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chiado, alongside many other governmental facilities, witnessing key historical events, including the Revolution of the 25th of April 1974 ending a 48 years dictatorship. 
‍

Although the façade maintains its original structure, the palace underwent severe reconstruction over the years mostly due to poor conditions (especially after the earthquake of 1969) and to accommodate the governmental offices.

Today the palace stands as a spatial palimpsest not only because of these multiple juxtaposed layerings of reconfigurations but because it has been built over the Mártires Church (1600s) destroyed in the great earthquake of 1755, and from which several relics and human remains were uncovered during the building’s repairs of 1976.

In 2015, the Palácio was sold for an astonishing 18 million euros to the Pension Funds of the Bank of Portugal, which through these and other acquired buildings in the historical centre of Lisbon, profit from real estate speculation and luxury apartment rentals amidst the city's critical housing crisis. 

The palace's multiple layerings are deeply intertwined with Lisbon's turbulent economic and social past and present, which not only reverberates through matters of ownership, inheritance, and property capital investment but also through its religious foundations, tourism-based economy, migration movements and incentives, all tinted by a still in discussion colonial past.
‍