Estoril Became Europe's Waiting Room for Exiled Royalty After the Second World War

Cascais and Estoril sit side by side on the Portuguese coast a short train ride west of Lisbon, and together they are still sometimes called the Portuguese Riviera, a nickname earned well before mass tourism arrived. Portugal's neutrality through the Second World War made the area an unusually safe address for European royalty who had lost their thrones, and several of them settled here for good, giving the coast a concentration of exiled old money that few other resort towns in Europe can claim.

The dethroned kings of Estoril

The best-documented resident is Umberto II, Italy's last king, who left Italy after losing a 1946 referendum on the monarchy and lived out his exile largely in Cascais until his death in 1983, a fact widely recorded in accounts of Italy's post-war royal family. King Carol II of Romania, who abdicated in 1940, also spent part of his exile on this stretch of coast, and Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona and father of Spain's later King Juan Carlos I, lived for years in Estoril while his own family waited out Francisco Franco's rule in Spain. Their presence, alongside a wider circle of European aristocrats who followed them, is why the area is still associated with a particular strand of displaced, understated old money rather than the flashier resort scenes elsewhere on the continent.

The casino that reportedly inspired Bond

Estoril's grand casino, one of Europe's largest, was also a wartime hub for spies operating out of neutral Portugal, and the British writer Ian Fleming, who worked for naval intelligence and stayed at the Palácio Estoril hotel during the war, is widely said to have drawn on his time there when he later created the fictional casino at the centre of Casino Royale. The hotel and casino both still operate today, a rare case of a Bond-adjacent location that visitors can actually walk into rather than only read about.

Traveller tips

• Frequent commuter trains run from Lisbon's Cais do Sodré station to both Cascais and Estoril, making a day trip straightforward without a car.
• The Palácio Estoril hotel and Casino Estoril are both open to the public; the casino requires a minimum age and photo ID to enter.
• Cascais' old town and marina are a short walk or bus ride from Estoril along the coastal promenade.
• Summer weekends draw large numbers of day-trippers from Lisbon; a weekday visit is markedly quieter.