Quinta Do Montalto

The farm of Montalto exists for over a century. Always owned by the family Gomes Pereira, all the successive generations that took charge of it succeeded in introducing benefits all over the farm, which contributed a lot to increase its value. The farm of Montalto was founded in the second half of the nineteenth century (1880) when Mariano Gomes Pereira Baptista (1858 – 1932) started buying, little by little, small stripes of land in order to enlarge the inheritance from his father Joaquim Gomes (+1889). Mariano Gomes was born in Corredoura - Vila Nova de Ourém and got married in Lisboa, where he owned a small shop. Later on, following an appeal from his heart and taking an opportunity, he left Lisboa behind and returned to his origins in the country, where he settled definitively. At those days the existing house was built according to a very representative Portuguese country style, being surrounded in the northern side by the road connecting Olival with Vila Nova de Ourém. Facing a wide scenery, the inhabited floor was just above the ground floor which was meant to lodge the agricultural implements and the stock raising tools. According to the customs of those days the house was humbly whitewashed but it had a wide dimension quite uncommon in the region. A flight of stairs in the façade allowed the access to a platform in an opened balcony where the main door seemed to invite the visitors inside. On the top of it, a simple enamelled door plate with the inscription “Montalto Vila Gomes” could be observed.