Princess Isabel sued Brazil for her Rio palace in 1895, and her heirs lost the case 125 years later

The Guanabara Palace in Rio de Janeiro was begun in 1853 by the Portuguese merchant José Machado Coelho. By 1865 it was the home of Princess Isabel, heir to Emperor Pedro II, and her husband, the Count d'Eu, and was called the Paço Isabel. The army proclaimed a republic in November 1889 and sent the imperial family into exile. The palace passed to the federal government. In 1895 Isabel and her husband sued for it. The case became the oldest in Brazil's courts. Isabel died in exile in France in 1921, and her descendants carried on the suit, filing a second claim for ownership in 1955^†. Meanwhile the palace was used by the state. Getúlio Vargas lived there as dictator from 1937 to 1945, and it was attacked in the 1938 Integralist coup attempt. From 1946 to 1960 it housed Rio's city government. Since 1960 it has been the seat of the government of the state of Rio de Janeiro. The Superior Court of Justice heard the appeal on 6 December 2018, 123 years after the first filing, and ruled that the palace belonged to the federal government, not the imperial family, with no compensation^†. The Supreme Federal Court closed the case in the government's favour in 2020^†. In 2026 the palace remains the governor's office.