The Mafra Station, situated on the Oeste Line that connects Lisbon to Figueira da Foz, is about eight kilometres from the town of Mafra, a distance that has become part of its identity over the years, especially for generations of recruits from the Practical Infantry School who disembarked there and walked to the barracks.
The station building preserves the nineteenth-century architecture typical of the line, inaugurated at the end of the 19th century, with iron awnings protecting the platforms and hand-painted signs with the station's name, contrasting with the more modern uniformity of other stations in the country.
The element that most distinguishes the Mafra Station is its tile panels, made in 1934 by António de Castro Mourinho, Álvaro Pedro Gomes and Mário Salvador. Several stations on the Oeste Line, between Lisbon and Caldas da Rainha, were decorated with tile panels commissioned from different artists, each leaving their mark. The station's tiles show images related to the region, such as the Mafra Convent and the Tapada de Mafra.
The station shares with São Bento Station in Porto the vocation of using azulejo — a deeply Portuguese material with roots in Moorish influence and the Baroque — to narrate scenes of daily life, local landscape or historical episodes, transforming a railway transit space into a small gallery of folk art. The station is thus a living, albeit fragile, testament to an artistic and railway tradition that deserves to be preserved.
