The Mata-Sete farm, which belonged to his mother Maria Emília Magalhães, had a romantic garden, a chapel from 1882 and a house from 1918.

The history of Casa de Serralves began in the early 1920s after Carlos Alberto Cabral (1895-1968), 2nd Count of Vizela, inherited his family's summer farm. A cultured and well-traveled man, he had an attraction for modernity and cosmopolitan living.

In 1927 he hired the architect who had already worked with his family, Marques da Silva, and asked for the extension of the existing house in the Quinta, located where the current one is today. This growth of the house was happening in the west, and south, since there was a chapel here, which was the source of the existing house. This chapel was "bricked up" and disguised with an exterior finish identical to the house. For those who do not know this, do not notice that there is a chapel here.