Mansion House, London the columned "Egyptian Hall", was so named because Dance used an arrangement of columns deemed to be "Egyptian" by Vitruvius. No Egyptian motifs were employed. It has twenty niches for sculpture. There was originally an open courtyard, later occupied by a saloon. The residence used to have its own court of law, since the Lord Mayor is the chief magistrate of the City while in office. There were eleven holding cells (ten for men and one, nicknamed "the birdcage", for women). A famous prisoner here was the early 20th-century suffragette women's rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst. Mansion House is home to
São Bento Mansion regime expropriates the mansion so that it would become the official residence of the President of the Council of Ministers (then the official title of the Prime Minister). After the necessary fitting-out works, António de Oliveira Salazar moves to the mansion in May 1938, even though the formal unveiling only takes place eleven months later, in April 1939. During the works, a monumental staircase connecting the grounds of the mansion to the Parliament gardens was commissioned to architect Cristino da Silva. When Marcelo Caetano became Prime Minister in 1968, the mansion saw major renovations: little more than the façades were