One inevitable consequence of the rise in popularity and price of properties located in Portugal’s inland Central Region is the offer for sale of substantial homes that have been in the same family for generations, never being sold on the open market.
In Pedrógão Pequeno, in the Castelo Branco region’s municipality of Sertã, a mansion has come on the market for the first time since its construction in the late 1800s. Built for the lawyer Joaquim Henriques Vidigal, money was no object after his return from a financially successful period in Brazil, following in his father Ângelo Vidigal’s footsteps.
Vidigal property, a beautifully proportioned building
Vidigal property, Pedrógão Pequeno
The energetic Joaquim clearly had inherited the knack of making money and returned to build his ‘palacete’ a few hundred metres from Quinta da Rocha, where he had spent his childhood. This generous man enjoyed a well-funded retirement while busying himself in local politics and good works until his death in 1913, leaving widow Maria Ângela and their five sons to inherit.
Well over a century later, the property is for sale outside the family for the first time in its history. The advantage of buying this property is that successive family inheritors have looked after it while leaving the interior without modern additions.
There is a world of financial difference between an original family mansion that has been looked after and one that has been abandoned and unmaintained...
Read the full article HERE.
Published in the Portugal Resident - 30th March 2024