This is a strangely abandoned place, located in Coina, Portugal, known under three names: The Witch Palace, the Hell Tower, and the King of the Garbage Palace. In the mid-eighteenth century, this land was owned by Don Joaquim Pina Manik, a prominent political figure of his era. At the end of the nineteenth century, the property was transferred to a man named Manuel Martins Gomes, the King of Garbage.
Manuel Martins Gomes was born in a poor family in Barreiro in 1860. In his youth, he promised to get out of poverty and become a rich and powerful man. He worked for a few years in Lisbon and saved some money to return to Barreiro and buy an old mill of water. On his return to Barreiro, strange things began to happen - the old mill burned a week after Manuel signed a contract with an insurance company. Since there was no evidence of intentional arson, Gomes received full payment from the insurer.
Manuel decided to use insurance money to buy land in the region and soon became a fairly wealthy owner. He also built a large pig farm and received permission from the Lisbon government to deal with the disposal of organic waste. Manuel did not disclose to the government how to get rid of garbage. He had a brilliant idea: to feed his garbage pigs and get paid for it.
The waste was transferred to Coina with five boats called "Lame", "Beelzebub", "Lucifer", "Devil" and "Satan" - Gomes was known to have a great contempt for the Catholic Church. Unlike his seemingly satanic inclinations, Gomes spent a lot of money on charity: he opened the first elementary public school in Barreiro, created the National Agrarian Party and lobbyed for the interests of the citizens. In the eyes of his compatriots, Manuel's dedication to the people was a great deal.
After the 1910 revolution, Gomes rebuilt his palace as he has so far. Officially, the reason for rebuilding the palace was to make it more suitable for family life. The locals, however, were convinced that Gomes reconstructed his palace to be the seat of a Masonic lodge. This version may be plausible because the building's architecture contains a network of underground labyrinths with numerous Masonic symbols as decoration.
The "King of Garbage" died in 1943 under some mysterious circumstances, and the cause of his death was not established. His palace never became a family. Over the next decades, the Palacio do Rei do Lixo passed from one to the other, each new owner wishing to rebuild the building. In a way, all the renovation works failed, because every time the workers left after a few days because they thought the place would be cursed. They claimed the ghost of a knight, with a bloody sword in one hand and a head of a red-haired woman in the other hand, appeared to them. Other locals reported that every evening they heard a woman's screams and the cries of a man.
In the mid-1980s, the palace was sold again, and the new owner presented a reconstruction plan. Just before the restoration works began, the palace tower ignited and burned completely. According to local people's stories, even the fire was endless - the flames, devouring the tower, were brilliant, and when the roof of the tower collapsed, the fire turned from blue to bright orange!
Superstitious or not, it seems that modern real estate developers are also cautious about this place because no one has tried to keep this extraordinary building ...