The Pena National Palace sits on top of a high hill of the Sintra Mountains. On a clear day it can be seen from Lisbon. It is a multi-colored restored royal palace, an important expression of 19th century Romanticism. It was not always so.

In the Middle Ages, tales of an apparition of the Virgin Mary prompted construction of the chapel of Our Lady of Pena. The chapel became a popular destination for pilgrims. In 1493, King John II of Portugal and his spouse, Queen Leonor, came to pay homage. Seeing the magnificence of the site, he ordered a monastery built.

The monastery was given to the Order of Saint Gerome. It harbored a small company of monks. The Great Earthquake of 1755 leveled everything, but the chapel was mostly spared.

In the early 1800s King Ferdinand, impressed by the miracle on the mountain, decided to rebuild the old monastery. He also ordered a castle for the royal family. Baron Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, a German architect, was hired to make Pena Palace.

The Palace is complex. There is the restored monastery with clock tower, a chapel yard, walls of arches, two gateways, a drawbridge and a cylindrical bastion with a "cathedral" interior. The Palace is a melange of medieval, Renaissance, neo-Gothic, neo-Islamic, neo-Renaissance and neo-Manueline styles with a distinct Romantic ambience inside and out.

The king had taken the shrine and turned it into a folly. But what a folly it is! The visitor is taken to exotic fairylands. The clock tower, completed in 1843, is a part of the Queen's Terrace. It has a sundial and a cannon, meant to be fired at noon. Does it disturb meditations in the chapel? The monks did not complain.

The park around the castle contains trees from around the world. Magnolias, Japanese Cryptomeria, Ginko, Sequoia, Cypresses and Cedars fill the Queen's Fern Garden. Hans Christian Anderson, Richard Strauss and Lord Byron have thought the place a castle of the Holy Grail. The Palace is a National Monument and a jewel in the crown of Sintra.

The Moorish Castle was built in the 8th and 9th centuries as a fortification of Muslim Iberia. In 1147, when Lisbon was captured by the army of Afonso Henriques, the castle surrendered to the Christian forces. Afonso established the Chapel of San Pedro within the fortress.

In 1375 King Ferdinand I restored the castle and strengthened the fortifications. By the 16th century the military effectiveness of the castle had waned. The inhabitants had abandoned the fortress for the village of Sintra. In 1755 the Lisbon earthquake nearly destroyed the chapel and made the castle unstable.

By 1838 the towers and walls of the castle were in ruins. Then Ferdinand II came to the rescue. He refurbished and improved the castle as he was restoring the neighboring monastery and building the Pena Palace. He consolidated the walls, reforested open areas and restored the chapel.

The castle consists of a double line of crenelated stone walls weaving their way the granite hills of the promontory. The towers are much changed from their original size and appearance. Nonetheless, the layout of the turrets follow the design engravings of Book of Fortresses from 1509.

Nearby the Castle are many other historical sites, including The Garden of Pena, the Estate of Pena Verde, and the Quinte da Regaleira. The Castle now is a Romantic ruin and a tourist magnet, especially for those hearty souls who don't mind a lot of hiking over granite outcroppings.

The chapel has a rectangular nave. lies outside the secondary wall of the fortress, near the entrance. The south wall has an arched doorway with colonnades with fantasy animal motifs. On the north side is a triumphal arch on double columns. There is a cradle vault with vestigial frescoes and a frieze with geometric designs.

The castle is classified as a National Monument and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Of all the palaces in Portugal, only one spans the whole history of the country: the National Palace of Sintra. The earliest date of construction is not clear but it is probably in the 10th or 11th century when the country was still under Moorish control. The palace is actually a complex of buildings adapted and added to over time.

The palace is known to have the most extensive collection of Mudéjar artifacts and Azulejo tiles in the world. Long after the reconquest of Sintra by Afonso Henriques in 1139, King Dinis proclaimed in 1281 that the maintenance of the palace should be the responsibility of the enfranchised Moors residing there.

In 1415 King John I constructed the main body of the palace complex around the central courtyard, called John's Wing. The facade of the main building has entrance arches and mullioned bifora windows in Manueline and Mudejar styles. The building has twin giant conical chimneys towering above enormous medieval kitchens.

Besides the circus-sized kitchens, King John I installed several rooms. The Swan Room has swans painted on the ceiling, celebrating the marriage of Philip the Good of Burgundy to his third wife, Isabela of Portugal.

The Magpie room has dozens of magpies painted on the ceiling and the frieze. The birds carry the message "For Good" in their beaks. The number of Magpies equaled the number of ladies of the court. The ladies had been gossiping about John stealing a kiss from a lady-in-waiting. He got his revenge by having the gossipers painted as chattering magpies.

Other rooms, from the reign of King Manuel I, include the Coat of Arms Room in the Manuel's Wing. The room has a coffered wooden ceiling with the coats of arms of 72 noble families of Portugal. The Golden Chamber was a receiving room for royalty. The Grotto of the Baths is covered in tile pictures of the Creation.

The palace was declared a National Monument in 1910 and a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1995.

The word "Quinta" refers to a whole estate and all within it. In this Quinta there are many wonders and curiosities in the palace itself and in the mysterious lakes, woods, grottoes, wells and constructions surrounding it.

The palace is known locally as "The Palace of Monteiro the Millionaire." The "Millionaire" is the former owner, Antonio Monteiro and he was, allegorically, an "eccentric" millionaire.

Quinta da Regaleira had belonged to D. Emelinda Monteiro de Almeida, Viscountess of Regaleira, child of a wealthy family of Porto. Emelinda sold the estate to Monteiro in 1892. Antonio was a millionaire coffee merchant from Brazil. He had obsessions that he needed to explore.

He hired Italian architect Luigi Manini and they set to work. They created various enigmatic buildings and settings derived from alchemy, Free Masonry, the Knights Templar, and even the Rosicrucians.

Construction started in 1904. It was mostly complete by 1910. The Palace facade is lavishly decorated with Gothic pinnacles, gargoyles, capitals and an awesome octagonal tower. The palace building has five floors; a ground floor, three upper floors and a basement. The uppermost floor opens on to a terrace.

A chapel is in front of the palace facade. There are frescoes, stained glass windows, stuccos, an armillary sphere and more than a few pentagrams. Most of the estate is wooded with park land and wild wood. There is a system of tunnels that connect to grottos, the chapel, lakes, caves, the tower and the awesome "Initiation Wells."

The Initiation Wells were meant as inverted towers for secret rites including the Tarot, Masons, Rosicrucians and all the rest of it. Spiral stairs lead to the bottom and tunnels connect to other sites on the estate. Sounds like spooky fun.

Lastly there are the lakes, fountains and the aquarium, not stocked with anything. The palace was designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1995.

In the late 18th century, Daniel Gildemeester, the Dutch consul in Sintra, was a tenant of Portuguese Prime Minister, Sebastião Mello, Marquis of Pombal. Daniel wanted a mansion of his own. He chose land on a hill with great views and fruit trees. He hired neoclassical architect Jose da Costa e Silva and built the Seteais Palace.

There are several derivations given for the name "Seteais." An old manuscript in the Sintra library says the word Seteais is from land called "Centeais", land growing rye, "Centeio" in Portuguese. In 1797 Daniel's widow sold the palace to Diogo Coutinho, 5th Marquis of Marialva.

Diogo used architect Jose again to expand the palace in 1802. It became a U-shaped building. The former consul's house was now one of the wings. The cornices of the facade were adorned with busts and garlands and other neoclassical motifs. The two wings were connected by a neoclassical arch honoring John VI and Princess Carlota Joaquina.

The arch honoring the royal couple was designed by architect Francisco Real Garcia. The walls and some rooms had frescoes of rare vegetation and mythical figures by French painter Jean Pillement. The State of Portugal acquired the palace and estate lands in 1946. It was remade in 1954 as the luxury hotel Tivoli Palacio de Seteais.