The imperial palace at Mafra, Portugal was built on a huge scale with loot from the Brazil colony. Everything is super-sized: room after room with billiard table, deer antlers, and last but surely not least the library. This is the largest library of leather-bound books in the world, and it is never done. As fast as they prepare new volumes, the rats of Mafra eat older books.

Incidentally, this is the place where each of five guards told me I couldn’t use my tripod, even though I showed no sign of using it. I guess they had nothing to do in the vastness, and couldn’t very well start gnawing leather-bound volumes.