The Wedding Cake Building

This palace type mansion is situated in Portugal, in the city of Lisbon at Fontes Pereira de Melo Avenue and is one of my favorites.

Lisbon is a great architectural melting pot with modern high straight line buildings and houses of the 18, 19 and early 20 centuries. Some reconstructions have both, being a 19-20th century building enlarged upward with contemporary glass wall panels.

This mansion was built between 1911 and 1915 and the architect was Manuel Joaquim Norte Júnior. The owner was José Maria Moreira Marques, a very wealthy capitalist that had made fortune in Brazil.

It has in its architectural lines elements of Classical, Neo-classical, Art Nouveau, Baroque and Neo-Arab influences.

It won in 1914 Lisbon's most prestigious award in architecture: Prémio Valmor and locals popularly called it the “wedding cake” because of its exuberant decoration.

In 1951 it was sold to Lisbon's City Hall that rented it in 1954 to be Headquarters of the Lisbon Metro. In 1999, the City Hall granted to the "Metropolitano de Lisboa" the ownership of the building. Due to it's importance it was listed as Building of Public Interest in 2002.