History
Sintra, the palaces in the hills above Lisbon
Kings, a king consort and a millionaire built their fantasies in the wooded hills of Sintra, and Byron called the place a glorious Eden. The palaces are as strange as their reputation, and the hills make the whole thing feel like a stage set left out in the rain.
By Walter Pellow2 November 20265 min read
Lord Byron came to Sintra in 1809, on the journey that produced Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and he put the place into the first canto of the poem as a "glorious Eden", a maze of mount and glen. Poets are not always reliable witnesses, but on this occasion he was right, and the description has followed Sintra around ever since. The hills rise out of the plain west of Lisbon, damp and green and wooded, and on their ridges and in their folds stand some of the oddest buildings in Europe.
The oddness is the point. Sintra was where those with money and imagination, royal and otherwise, built exactly what they liked. In 1995 UNESCO listed the town and its hills together as the Cultural Landscape of Sintra, described as the first use of that category anywhere in Europe. It was a recognition that here the gardens, woods, palaces and mountain matter as one thing.
The king consort's castle in the clouds
The building everyone has seen in photographs is the Pena Palace, on a high point of the hills. It was the creation of Ferdinand II, the German-born king consort of Portugal, who in the 1840s turned the ruins of a monastery into a castle of his own design. He threw in Gothic towers, Moorish arches, Renaissance windows and a good deal besides, and painted the result in yellows and reds that can be seen from far below. It is not subtle. On a clear day it looks like a palace in a fairy tale; on a day of low cloud, which Sintra has often, its towers come and go in the mist like something half remembered.
Across the valley from it, along a granite ridge, run the walls of the Moorish Castle, built by the Moors when this part of Iberia was under Muslim rule, and acquired by Ferdinand along with the monastery lands. Walking its battlements, with the Pena Palace on one side and the plain stretching to the Atlantic on the other, is a short walk I would not miss.
On a day of low cloud its towers come and go in the mist like something half remembered.
Chimneys and a well that goes down
In the town itself is the National Palace of Sintra, the older royal palace in the middle of the town. You will know it by its two enormous conical white chimneys, which rise above the palace kitchen and have become the emblem of the town. It is older and more domestic than the fantasies on the hills above.
The strangest place of all is the Quinta da Regaleira, a short walk from the centre. It was built for António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro, a very rich man known in his day as Monteiro the Millionaire, to designs by the Italian architect and stage designer Luigi Manini. The house is elaborate, but the gardens are the thing: grottoes, tunnels, ponds with stepping stones, and the Initiation Well, an inverted tower that spirals some twenty-seven metres down into the rock. Monteiro was interested in Freemasonry, alchemy and the Templars, and the well is usually read as a stage for some kind of initiation. Nobody is quite sure. Going down it, round and round towards the small circle of light at the bottom, feels like it was meant to be a riddle.
Beyond the hills, the land runs out at Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point of mainland Europe. It is the place Camões, Portugal's national poet, is usually quoted as describing as where the land ends and the sea begins.
Christmas on the Lisbon coast
Three holidays in the catalogue include Sintra, and all three, by their titles, are Christmas breaks.
Travelsphere's six-night Christmas on the Lisbon Coast lists Ericeira, Lisbon, Óbidos, Mafra, Sintra, Cascais and Cabo da Roca among its places.
Just You's six-night holiday of the same name, Christmas on the Lisbon Coast, has Cascais, Óbidos, Sintra, Cabo da Roca, Lisbon and Mafra.
Just You's ten-night Christmas in Porto & New Year on the Lisbon Coast covers more ground. It begins with Porto, Viana do Castelo and Guimarães, takes in Coimbra, and then has Cascais, Lisbon, Sintra, Óbidos and the Cabo da Roca Lighthouse.
Sintra in winter has much to recommend it. The hills are often wet and the mist comes and goes, but the woods are deep green, and the Pena Palace in cloud is arguably more itself than in sunshine. Wear good shoes, take a coat, and leave time for the Regaleira's well.
By Walter Pellow, the name Atlas & Passage’s editorial team writes under. Prices and dates in the trips below come from the operators and can change.
