Palácio Burnay (Higher Institute of Social Sciences and Overseas Policy)

The palace, from the early 18th century and also known as the Palace of the Patriarchs (Palácio dos Patriarcas), was bought in 1940 by the Ministry of the Colonies, which installed here the Technical Council for Colonial Development, the Board of Geographical Missions, the Higher Inspectorate of Colonial Administration and the Council of the Colonial Empire.¹ In 1952 it hosted the First National Congress of Tropical Medicine.²

In 1962 the school that trained the cadres of the colonial administration arrived. Founded in 1906 at the Geographical Society as the Colonial School, called the Higher Colonial School from 1926 and housed in the Palacete dos Anjos, in Príncipe Real, from 1933, it had become the Higher Institute of Overseas Studies in 1954. President Américo Tomás inaugurated it in this palace on 20 November 1962; four days later, it was called the Higher Institute of Social Sciences and Overseas Policy.³ One of the professors at the Higher Colonial School, António de Almeida, had in 1940, with Artur Ricardo Jorge, led the teams that measured the people put on display in the Colonial Garden.⁴

For the researcher Frederico Ágoas, the school’s changes of name, after the constitutional revision of the early 1950s had enshrined the “províncias ultramarinas” (overseas provinces), were above all an effort at “political cosmetics and propaganda” to defend the empire; the palace, which also housed the Overseas Council, became one of the places where many commonplaces were voiced about the “nature of the Portuguese” and their relationship with other peoples.¹

In 1974 the institute dropped “Overseas Policy” (Política Ultramarina) from its name and became the Higher Institute of Social and Political Sciences.³ After the institute left, the palace was abandoned; in January 2024 the Government approved €16 million to restore it as the headquarters of Museus e Monumentos de Portugal.⁵