Pedro II's heirs still collect 2.5 percent of every land sale in central Petrópolis, 137 years after the empire fell

In 1830 Pedro I bought the Córrego Seco farm in the mountains above Rio and renamed it the Imperial Fazenda da Concórdia. On his death in 1834 it passed to his son Pedro II. In March 1843 Pedro II approved a summer palace and the settlement of the surrounding land. An order of the imperial household of 20 March 1847 had the farm's land granted out in emphyteusis: settlers held their plots for ever but paid the imperial house an annual fee (foro) and, on every sale, a transfer fee (laudêmio). The town that grew there, Petrópolis, had no municipal land of its own. The monarchy fell in 1889 and Pedro II died in exile in 1891, but the land rights stayed private and passed to his heirs. The Companhia Imobiliária de Petrópolis, successor to the old Superintendency of the Imperial Fazenda, still collects the foro and a 2.5 percent laudêmio on sales in the city's first district. The 2002 Civil Code banned new emphyteusis but kept existing ones until they end. The family split in 1908, when Princess Isabel's eldest son, Pedro de Alcântara, renounced his succession rights at Cannes to marry Countess Elisabeth Dobržensky. His descendants form the Petrópolis branch and his brother's the Vassouras branch. Under a family agreement from the 1940s, only the Petrópolis branch receives the laudêmio^†.