The project was conceived and executed in 1915, by Swiss architect (and later naturalized Portuguese) Ernesto Korrodi, under contract with João José Ferreira Rego, then married to a Brazilian lady named Francisca Peixoto Rego. The castle's name came from the patroness, whose diminutive form (Chica) was the origin of its popular name; Francisca Peixoto Rego was active in the import of many of the arboreal plant species from Brazil, used to landscape the property. Korrodi's project was based on his idealized concept of the Habitação Nobre de Província (Provincial Nobles' House), a typology that the architect was dedicated to at the beginning of the 20th century, and which "...evoked, across diverse inspirational sources, one of the art of the Middle Ages and one from a determined social lifestyle, of the triumphal burgers of the 19th century, while grounded in tradition and progress..."Lucília Verdelho da Costa (1997), p. 235
