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Originally the three windows of the upper floor belonged to a large hall whose ceiling was like that of the Sala dos Cysnes. Unfortunately the ceiling was destroyed, and the hall cut up into small rooms some time ago. Inside are several Manoelino doorways. One at the end of a passage has a half-octagonal head, with curved sides.
High above the dark tile roofs there tower the two strange kitchen chimneys, huge conical spires ending in round funnels, now all plastered, but once covered with a pattern of green and white tiles. Entrance Court. 2. Sala dos Cysnes. 3. Central Pateo. 4. Sala das Pegas. 5. " " Sereias. 5ª. " do Conselho. 6. Sala da Jantar. 7. Servery. 8. Sala dos Arabes. 9. Chapel. 10. Kitchen. 11.
When Dom Manoel was making his great addition to the palace in the early years of the sixteenth century he lined the walls of the Sala dos Cysnes with tiles forming a check of green and white. These are carried up over the doors and windows, and in places have a curious cresting of green cones like Moorish battlements, and of castles.
The main door leading into the Sala dos Cysnes is of his time, as is too a window in the upper passage leading to the chapel gallery. Though the walls of the Sala das Duas Irmãs are probably older, he altered it inside and built the two rows of columns and arches which support the floor of the Sala dos Brazões above. The arches are round and unmoulded.
On this terrace stands the main front of the palace. Below are four large pointed arches, and above five beautiful windows lighting the great Sala dos Cysnes or Swan Hall.
These paintings, which are very well done, certainly seem to belong to the seventeenth century, for the trees and water are not at all like the work of an artist of Dom Manoel's time. Even more remarkable is the roof of the Sala dos Brazões or dos Escudos that is 'of the shields' also built by Dom Manoel, and also retouched at the same time as that in the Sala dos Cysnes.
The whole is of great interest not only for its own sake, but because it is the only ceiling in the palace which has remained unchanged since the end of the fourteenth century, and because it is, as it were, the parent of the splendid roofs in the Sala dos Cysnes and of the still more wonderful one in the Sala dos Escudos. The kitchen lies at the back of the chapel and at right angles to it.
From the Sala das Pegas one door leads up a few steps into the Sala das Sereias, and another to the dining-room. This Sala das Sereias, so called from the mermaids painted on the ceiling, is a small room some eighteen feet square. It is lit by a two-light window opening towards the courtyard, a window just like those of the Sala das Pegas and of the Sala dos Cysnes.
The simple boarding of the earlier roofs may well have led to the two wonderful ceilings at Cintra, those in the Sala dos Cysnes, and in the Sala dos Brazões or dos Escudos, but the idea of the many octagons in the Sala dos Cysnes may have come from some such roof as that at Caminha, when the octagons are so important a feature of the design.
East of the fireplace a door having a wide flat ogee head leads into a small porch built in the corner of the pateo to protect the passage to the Sala das Pegas, the first of the rooms to the south of this pateo. In the angle formed by the end wall of the Sala dos Cysnes and the side of the Sala das Pegas there is a small low room now called the Sala de Dom Sebastião or do Conselho.
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