Flashback: Palace playgrounds litter the landscape

Nov. 23, 2019: Royalty and rich Portuguese families made Sintra their cool mountain summer retreat for centuries, but now we plebians can revel in the palace playgrounds they created.  

The lush, green valley – quite different from much of Portugal’s dry, tan countryside – is the place to overdose on palaces. You can visit nearly a dozen, including a multi-hued Disney-esque fantasy palace, manor homes, a convent and a fortress in ruins.

Most people visit the small town, a 40-minute train ride from Lisbon, on a day trip. But several clues led us to spend two full days there:

• UNESCO declared the area a World Heritage Site in 1995, in the Cultural Landscape category
• Our list of must-see places kept growing
• Two friends independently advised us to allot as many days as we could

We arrived in Sintra one evening and, after a magnificent dinner and a good night’s sleep, began our palace marathon early the next day. We managed to see the Pena Palace, Moorish Castle, National Palace, and Quinta da Regaleira before our two days ran out.

Pena Palace

Pena Palace – the first one everyone heads to – looks like it was designed by a romantic Disney animator armed with gallons of vibrant paint. King Ferdinand II was that imaginative dude. In 1838, he and his wife, Queen Maria, bought a ramshackle monastery fixer-upper high on the mountain overlooking Sintra and began adding to it, creating a summer residence like no other.

“In the 19^th century Sintra became the first centre of European Romantic architecture,” explained UNESCO. “Ferdinand II turned a ruined monastery into a castle where this new sensitivity was displayed in the use of Gothic, Egyptian, Moorish and Renaissance elements.”

Our heads were on swivels as we tried to take in all the fantastic details in the Old Palace (the rose-painted renovated monastery built in the early 1500s) and the New Palace (the extension Ferdinand built from 1842 to 1857, painted yellowy-ochre with some walls covered in blue tiles).

Ferdinand, cousin to Queen Victoria of Britain, was devoted to the arts and you can tell he was fascinated by a wide variety of artistic and architectural expressions. We saw an exuberance: monogrammed vaulted ceilings; huge shell-shaped fountain held up by turtles in the centre of the cloister; Limoges dishes; filigree silver around drawer pulls on a wood cabinet; nymphs painted on the wall; mosaic tiles; plaster pine cones; papier mache furniture inset with mother of pearl; copper utensils marked with PP for Pena Palace and Ferdinand’s crown monogram. The palace had all the latest conveniences, such as the first flush toilets, a bathtub, and a wooden bidet trimmed in fabric and fringe.

We visited in November and were surprised by the crowds. What would it be like at the height of tourist season? We shuffled along the designated one-way route through the inside rooms, respecting the signs that prohibited photos and getting annoyed by people who did not.

After Maria died giving birth to their 11^th child, Ferdinand married the Countess of Edla, who continued designing interiors and the extensive park grounds that spill down the mountain below the castle. We could have spent a day just wandering the park to see all its botanical and architectural features. We followed winding paths and arched bridges over streams, luxuriating in the green oasis after the crowded castle. I ran my hands lightly over mossy rocks. We saw the greenhouse, the camellia collection and the Queen’s Fern Valley, which included tree ferns from New Zealand. The Valley of the Lakes has five connected ponds lined with paths; fancy towers on tiny islands house the ducks.    

That combination of palace, parks and gardens, which we saw elsewhere in Sintra, “influenced the development of landscape architecture throughout Europe,” said UNESCO.

Moorish Castle

Uphill hiking and stair-climbing: exploring the Moorish Castle doubles as a good workout. The semi-ruined fortress hugs two mountain peaks, quite near the Pena Palace, so we visited both in one day.

Muslims built this military fort in the 10^th century as a control tower looking out over the Atlantic Ocean to help protect Lisbon. However, Christians seized it in 1147 after they had conquered Lisbon, ending Muslim rule.

Centuries later, when King Ferdinand moved into the hood at his nearby Pena Palace, he oversaw a partial restoration starting in 1839. Unfortunately, his romantic-style ‘improvements’ damaged some of the archeological remains just outside the castle walls: medieval Islamic living quarters and a Christian necropolis. To compensate, he built a tomb for the human bones unearthed, with a headstone bearing a cross and a crescent to acknowledge he didn’t know whether the bones belonged to Christian or Muslim folk.

After entering through the crenellated stone wall, we turned right to climb up to the Castle Keep where we walked along the ramparts and climbed further up the towers, peeking through the narrow windows. It’s just plain fun to scamper up and down like kids at a playground, although our ‘scampering’ was markedly slower.

From the keep, we hiked along the top of the wall as it followed a dip in the mountain and then up the next peak to the Royal Tower, where we could see the Pena Palace. To the right was a fine view over Sintra and many of its other palaces: Monserrate, Seteais, Quinta da Regaleira, Villa Sassetti and the National Palace.

In the castle’s lower portion, mid-way between the Castle Keep and the Royal Tower, lies a paved square where the military troops drilled, old stables, and an underground cistern built to store water. The plink plink of water drops echoed.

National Palace

The National Palace, right in the centre of Sintra, also began as a Moorish fort that was seized by the Portuguese crown in 1147. And, like the Pena Palace, it has been added on to for centuries, in a meandering way around inner courtyards and gardens. It’s still used for official receptions.

Ceilings and tiles are the most notable features. Ceramic tile came to what is now Portugal with the Moors and were further developed after the Christian reconquest. It’s now a traditional Portuguese architectural element.

You end your visit with a crick in your neck, after seeing The Swan Room ceiling, with its 27 renaissance wooden panels with swans in different poses. Likewise, the Magpie Room depicts 136 magpies. The ceiling in Blazons Hall, with its dozens of coats of arms, is still an important reference for Portuguese families. 

Quinta da Regaleira

The quirky, mysterious, ornate Quinta da Regaleira was our favourite (see separate story “We romped through hell”). The palace itself is smaller than the others, built in the early 1900s by millionaire Antonio Carvalho Monteiro and his architect Luigi Manini. It’s interesting, but people really come to see the extensive park surrounding it, filled with towers, plazas, benches, fountains, grottoes, winding paths, a chapel. All the fancy stonework has symbolism and metaphor built in – Freemasons, Knights Templar, Rosicrucian and Christian.   

The most fun part is the wells, also called inverted towers since they never had water in them. The Initiation Well was supposed to have been used in Masonic initiation rites. You walk down the winding staircase nine levels, representing the nine levels of hell. At the bottom is a tile mosaic of a white Knights Templar cross intertwined with a compass. Then you follow a tunnel that splits into many more, leading to several exits. One exit is into another well, called the Unfinished Well, which has much cruder stonework. Other exits bring you to a cave behind a waterfall and pond.

Other palaces

Two days just wasn’t enough to completely overdose on palaces. When we go back, we’ll spend more time in the Pena Palace Park, especially the Chalet of the Countess of Edla, and explore the Quinta do Relógio, Monserrate Palace, Seteais Palace, Sanctuario da Peninha, Convento dos Capuchos and Villa Sassetti. And we may just go to hell again at Quinta da Regaliera!

5 tips for an enjoyable visit:

1. Take the train from Lisbon (currently $4 CDN). Driving and parking in Sintra are challenging with the crowds and narrow, winding streets. Bus #434 from the train station is the easiest way to visit Pena Palace and the Moorish Castle, way up the mountain. The National Palace is right in the town’s centre and Quinta da Regaleira is an easy, flat walk from there.
2. Leave lots of time so you can explore the parks at your leisure, especially at Pena Palace and Quinta da Regaleira.
3. Find restaurants off the main tourist streets; they’re quieter and less expensive.
4. Stop at the tourist information centre first, to help get your bearings and ask about multi-palace tickets, entry times and so on.
5. Visit places as early as you can, or late in the afternoon, to help avoid day-trippers. Sintra is crowded for good reason – it’s stunning!