[10] First, in a speech during a function at the palace in late 1974, Antonio de Almeida Santos, the Minister of Interterritorial Coordination in the new Portuguese government, stated that the East Timorese should be free to choose their own destiny.

[11] Secondly, on 28 November 1975, approximately a year later, the Fretilin political party, at a hastily organised ceremony before a crowd of 2,000 gathered in front of the palace, made a unilateral declaration of independence of East Timor from Portuguese colonial rule.

[11] Thirdly, on 7 December 1975, just over a week later, Indonesia began a full-scale invasion of East Timor, focused on Dili.

[12][13] By midday, Indonesian troops had secured the palace and had posted teams along the key routes leading out of the centre of town.

[8] During the violence in late 1999, much of Dili was set alight; as of April 2000, the palace was one of only a handful of fire damaged city buildings that had been repaired.

[22] According to Clinton Fernandes, a professor of international and political studies at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia, in his book Island off the Coast of Asia (2018), the listening devices installed in the palace: "... were turned on and off by a covert agent inside the building.

They then beamed the recording by microwave signal to a line-of-sight covert listening base set up inside the Central Maritime Hotel ...

[18][22][23] On 28 April 2006, in the early stages of a dispute between the government and a group of former soldiers, a riot broke out in Dili and a mob attacked the palace.

[24][25] On 20 June, after international forces had intervened in the dispute at the request of the government, a protest rally was held in front of the palace.

[26] In June 2012, construction workers digging holes in the garden of the palace discovered a mass grave with the bones of at least 52 people.

[22] On 30 August 2019, the prime ministers of the two nations stood outside the palace to announce the formal ratification of the treaty, and celebrate the 20th anniversary of East Timor's vote for independence.

[8] Between the palace and the Avenida is a formal ceremonial urban open space, which was planned as a symbolic replication of the Praça do Comércio (transl.

[8] In the 2010s, the open space was re-branded from a largo (square) to a praça (plaza) honouring East Timor's unilateral declaration of independence in 1975.

According to Pat Walsh, an Australian human rights advocate: "The [palace] and its largo to Henry were most likely Salazar's way of telling the UN va embora!

Nevertheless, the retention of the monument in such a prominent location appears to have been a conscious decision by East Timor's government to embrace the country's Portuguese colonial legacy as part of its national identity.