Architecture sights in Sintra
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A
Palácio Nacional da Pena
Rising up from a thickly wooded peak and often enshrouded in swirling mist, Palácio Nacional da Pena is pure fantasy stuff. The wacky confection is a riot of onion domes, Moorish keyhole gates, writhing stone snakes, and crenellated towers in sherbet-bonbon pinks and lemons. Ferdinand of Saxe Coburg-Gotha, the artist-husband of Queen Maria II, commissioned Prussian architect Ludwig von Eschwege in 1840 to build the Bavarian-Manueline epic (and as a final flourish added an armoured statue of himself, overlooking the palace from a nearby peak).
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B
Castelo dos Mouros
Soaring 412m above sea level, this mist-enshrouded ruined castle is a Great Wall of China in miniature. Like a dragon’s backbone, this 9th-century Moorish castle’s dizzying ramparts wriggle across the mountain ridges and past moss-clad boulders the size of small buses. When the clouds peel away, the vistas over Sintra’s palace-dotted hill and dale to the glittering Atlantic are – like the climb – breathtaking.
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C
Palácio de Monserrate
The Moorish-inspired Palácio de Monserrate was constructed in the late 1850s by James Knowles for another wealthy Englishman, Sir Francis Cook. Previously on the site stood a Gothic-style villa, rented by the rich, infamous British Gothic writer, William Beckford, in 1794 after he fled Britain in the wake of a homosexual scandal. Visits to the recently restored Monserrate Palace are by 90-minute guided tour (including the grounds); reservations are essential.
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D
Palácio Nacional de Sintra
The icing on Sintra-Vila’s Unesco World Heritage cake is this palace, whose iconic twin conical chimneys set imaginations into overdrive and cameras snapping. Of Moorish origins, the palace was first expanded by Dom Dinis (1261–1325), enlarged by João I in the 15th century (when the kitchens were built), then given a Manueline twist by Manuel I in the following century.
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