Tuesday 25 August 2026 et seq – Long Post Alert!
Sintra is a bonkers place, you can tell as soon as you step off the train and walk past the ticket office in the station.
I began to get a sense of artistic overload as we made the short journey from the station to our hotel, which has a bonkers sort of name – the Bliss Hotel. However, despite the rather fey name, it’s actually a modern, well-organised place and the friendly receptionist had us booked in and into our room in short order. It’s a comfortable room and, being modern, is rather better laid out than the room we had in Lisbon, albeit without a fridge for the milk.
It was late afternoon and the weather was good (which was more than could be said for the morrow’s prospects), which meant that it was time to go for a walk. Obviously. So we set out for a look around and to find a bite to eat, and the full force of Sintra’s bonkersness became clear as we walked around. Here, for example, are the buildings next to our hotel.
and opposite them we see this.
The Town Hall is simply wonderful, with overtones of Gaudi (and it’s very own rollo*),
and looking up across the strikingly unusual buildings to the Moorish Castle on the far hillside
gave me powerful sense of déjà vu – the perspective reminded me strongly of the forced perspective one sees in Portmeirion. It’s a delight for the senses. The constant sense of something unusual going on comes, I think, from its very unusual background. Sintra’s history spans from Neolithic times via Moorish rule in the 8th century through the 1147 Christian conquest, after which it became a royal retreat. In the 19th century, King Ferdinand II transformed Sintra into Europe’s first center of Romantic architecture, blending Gothic, Egyptian, and Moorish styles into UNESCO-listed palaces. It’s this mish-mash of architecture, combined with the Portuguese flair for colourful decoration, that makes the place so striking, I think. And this is before we’ve seen even one palace!
Jane’s instinct for finding a decent place for a bite to eat led us unerringly to the Sintra Terrace restaurant,
which gave us a very fine meal with a very fine view.
Actually, it wasn’t quite unerring, as the map of Sintra gives one absolutely no idea about how complicated the village is, because it’s steeply arrayed up the side of a hill (the one with the Moorish Castle at the top). But we found it eventually, and then, refreshed, went for a potter around. I suppose Sintra is officially a town, but the locals refer to it as a village, and it has a lot of little villagey nooks and crannies as you walk around,
and lots of narrow streets,
with, it has to be said, lots of tourists.
The walk from the hotel to the centre of the village takes one past what I roguishly labelled a Moorish bus shelter
but which is actually a fountain, and a very striking one at that. One also passes a bewildering array of occasionally bizarre sculptures, which apparently get changed quite frequently;
there’s a sculpture park in the depths of the greenery you can see behind these examples. The village, even on a Tuesday evening, is a buzzy place,
and we got a first glimpse of one of the three (bonkers) palaces for which Sintra is well known.
This is the National Palace, and Carlos was to be on hand to take us around it the next day. It was good to have had the chance for a wander around the village in nice weather, because we were by no means sure what we’d be faced with the next day.
Accordingly, we met Carlos at 10am and went out – into lashing rain. We walked along to the village and when Carlos suggested that we stop for a coffee and a traditional Sintra take on the pastel de nata, called a queijada, we acceded easily. There are a few places in the village which speciaise in these local pastries,
and so we had some delicious bites to eat with a coffee,
whilst Carlos gave us some background to Sintra and the things we could expect to see.
Our first stop was the National Palace. Carlos managed to get us in in front of a queue of several dozen in a tour group, and we wandered through the palace, which is a very palacey sort of palace,
with palacey rooms a-plenty.
To quote from its website, “The current Palace of Sintra emerges out of many royal palaces. This is a set of buildings that were constructed, added and adapted over the course of many centuries with the actual date of the founding of the country’s oldest palace a question that still remains to be resolved. In all likelihood, the first building was constructed in around the 10th or 11th century when Sintra was under Moorish rule. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Palace of Sintra was at the heart of a large territory under the care of the Queens of Portugal while also one of the preferred destinations for Portuguese monarchs. The abundance of hunting in the region, the freshness of the climate during the summer months and the need to take refuge during periods of plague in the capital all contributed to turning the Palace of Sintra into a regular destination.”
The walk through the rooms features some panels where actors interpret the monarchs – particularly the queens, who were often very powerful and forceful people – and other key people involved in the history of the palace and the country. It’s an interesting tour, and there are several arresting sights, such as the Swan Room.
with its wonderful hand-painted ceiling.
It was used as a Great Hall of the Palace from the time of King João I and Queen Philippa of Lancaster. Its name derives, you’ll be surprised to learn, from the decoration on the ceiling panels with their date of execution unknown but believed to have been in the 14th century when Sintra, as part of the Queens’ Lands, was under the direct administration of Queen Philippa; the swan with a crown was an emblem deployed by Henry IV of England, her brother.
Another striking ceiling can be found in the antechamber of King João l; this second room of the king’s apartments, next to his bedchamber, was used for royal audiences.
This room, again you’ll be staggered to learn, is called the Magpie Room – the magpie and the motto “Por Bem” (for Good) being emblems used by King João.
Generally speaking, the Palace gives good ceiling. This is another example, the Galley Room.
Commissioned by King John Il (1502-1557), this room, possibly a gallery, connected his apartments with the north-west wing of the Palace. The ceiling, featuring ships from Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, and the Netherlands, dates back to the 17th century.
The best ceiling, though, can be found in the most striking room in the Palace, the Heraldic Hall.
Here’s as much of the ceiling as I could fit into a shot.
The Heraldic Hall is the ultimate expression of the monarchical ideal of King Manuel 1 (1469-1521). By placing his coat of arms at the top of the dome King Manuel I positioned himself as the centre and pinnacle of a society that was hierarchical yet interdependent: his authority relied on the nobility – represented here by 72 coats of arms of the most prominent families – who, in turn, received their social distinction from the king. King Manuel highlights his own lineage by displaying his descendants through the coats of arms of his eight sons and daughters (the latter with half a shield, awaiting marriage to complete it).
We passed evidence of restoration work being carried out in the palace
and our final port of call was the kitchen, the part of the building sporting the Palace’s two bonkers chimneys.
If you’re going to do a chicken brick, do it properly; that’s the way!
We exited through the shop, with its wonderful retail offerings,
and Carlos took us to another of those bakeries for some more queijadas. This was one of the original bakeries in the village – Piriquita means little canary, which was the nickname of the founder whose family still run the business today.
It’s dead popular.
We sampled a further variety of typical Sintra pastries and then Carlos took his leave of us, having made sure we knew how to find our next destination – a mansion house and its grounds called Quinta da Regaleira. Unsurprisingly, this being Sintra, it’s bonkers.
The estate was bought in the late 1800s by António Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro, an eccentric and wealthy Portuguese businessman who had amassed a fortune in Brazil. He worked with the Italian architect and theatrical stage designer Luigi Manini. To quote the website, “The culture and creativity of these two personalities resulted in an eclectic-revivalist architectural ensemble, with a particular focus on the Manueline, Renaissance, Medieval and Classical styles.” To quote the BBC, “Quinta da Regaleira is a postcard-perfect mix of Gothic, Egyptian, Moorish and Renaissance architecture.” Between 1904 and 1910 the two of them created a property brimming with pagan and Christian symbolism. Bonkers, in other words.
Carvalho Monteiro had a deep interest in – and was quite possibly an initiate of – the Knights Templar, a Catholic military order with roots dating to the early 12th Century. And one of the features in the gardens of the manor house was something that Jane knew about and particularly wanted to see – the Initiation Well. This was what we first headed for – or we would have, had the map they gave us at the ticket office been any use. But it was spectacularly useless. Fortunately there were occasional signposts and we got there in the end. There are actually two such structures, but one of them is unfinished.
We could see people at the bottom, and wondered how to get there, but in the interim headed for the main one, which was detectable because there was a queue. One walks down a spiral of stone stairs;
it gets darker and darker towards the bottom, and a tunnel leads away from it, branching into other tunnels – there is some modern lighting to relieve utter darkness. And one of the branching tunnels leads to the bottom the unfinished well,
so now we know how the people got there. The exit from the tunnels is by a waterfall.
The purpose of this bizarre construction? Again according to the BBC, it is believed that Templar initiations at Quinta da Regaleira began with candidates entering the Initiation Well blindfolded. Holding a sword close to their heart, they would descend nine flights of stairs – a number that represents the nine founders of the Templar order. Once reaching the bottom of the well, the candidate would walk into a dark labyrinth where they would symbolically and literally have to find their way up towards the light. If they were able to make it back (without straying into the incomplete Well) to emerge into the sunlight by the waterfall, initiates would walk across stones in the water to reach the chapel, where they would then be welcomed into the brotherhood.
Bonkers.
Here are a few photos of some of the other corners of the gardens, to give you an idea of its architectural range.
The last building there is the chapel, and I took a peek inside.
Both its inside and outside feature the extreme detailing that is typical of the Manueline style, named for King Manuel I, in whose reign the style was developed.
The chapel is a neighbour to the manor house itself.
We looked in, and there were several more Manueline flourishes
but there wasn’t much else to detain us; and anyway we had another place we needed to be, so we headed out.
That other place was the Moorish Castle, dating from the 8th and 9th Centuries, which, as I’ve said before, is at the top of the hill. So we started up
and up
and, long story short, got to the top of the ramparts.
En route (apart from having to buy tickets to get in), we passed great views over Sintra
of the castle itself,
and even of Lisbon in the distance,
but the prize we were after was a view of another Palace, the Pena Palace, whose architecture is, you’ve guessed it, bonkers.
The Moorish castle itself held little of interest – it was badly damaged during the 1755 earthquake, so, having got the photo we’d come all this way to capture, we headed back down towards the village. The signage we encountered was exceedingly confusing, and pointed us in several different directions, but we managed to get back to Sintra by the fairly simple expedient of simply heading downhill. We got back to the village in fair need of a G&T and providence stepped in for us; no sooner had we been served our drinks than the heavens opened. If we’d been five minutes later getting down from the castle we’d have been drenched.
All in all, it has been an excellent 24 Hours in Sintra. We are due back in Lisbon on the morrow, but plan A says we might have a go at visiting the Pena Palace first. So come back soon to find out whether that particular plan came together.
* Actually not a rollo, which is a Spanish thing we saw a lot of on our Camino Francés, but a pelhourinho, a pillory – a a stone column, or less frequently a wooden one, erected in a public place, next to which criminals were exposed and punished. So similar in principle to a rollo, then.