Sintra

Overview

Byron called it a glorious Eden, and the kings of Portugal agreed with him for five centuries: Sintra is a wooded mountain 28 km north-west of Lisbon that catches the sea mist, and on its slopes and summits the royal family and everyone who could afford to imitate them built palaces, a Moorish castle was left to romantic ruin, and the whole hillside was listed by UNESCO as a cultural landscape. The Pena Palace, a yellow and red fantasy on the highest peak, is one of the most visited monuments in the country, and the town below it is the most visited day trip from the capital.

That is the problem as well as the point. Sintra on a summer weekend is a queue for the bus, a queue for the palace and a traffic jam on the one road up the hill, and the way to see it is the way the Romantics did, on foot through the woods, early or late, with tickets bought in advance. The train from Lisbon’s Rossio takes 40 minutes; the coast at Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point of Europe, and the beaches beyond are the other half of the day.

Neighbourhoods

The old town

The Vila Velha is the few streets around the National Palace: the Praça da República, the tourist office, the Piriquita pastry shop and the souvenir lanes, with the restaurants, the 434 bus stop and the tuk-tuk drivers. It is a ten-minute walk uphill from the station, and it is where to stay if you stay.

São Pedro and the station

The station quarter at the bottom, Estefânia, has the cheaper restaurants and the bus stops; São Pedro de Sintra, on the road above the old town, is the residential village where the villas of the 19th-century rich stand in their gardens, with a few hotels and guesthouses among them.

The mountain and Colares

The serra itself, the Sintra-Cascais natural park, is the palaces, the woods and the walking trails, with Colares on its western foot, a wine village of stone quintas, and the coast villages of Praia das Maçãs and Azenhas do Mar beyond.

See & do

The Pena Palace

Pena was built between 1838 and 1854 by Ferdinand II, the German consort of Queen Maria II, out of a ruined Hieronymite monastery on the summit, in every style he liked at once, and it was the royal family’s summer house until the revolution of 1910; a park of exotic trees surrounds it and the view runs to Lisbon and the sea. Tickets are timed, €20 for adults, and the palace is a 30-minute walk uphill from the park gate, so arrive half an hour before your slot; the terraces and the royal apartments are shown in one direction only.

The Castle of the Moors

The Castelo dos Mouros is a ring of walls along a granite ridge below Pena, built by the Moors in the 8th and 9th centuries and taken a month after Lisbon fell in 1147; you walk the battlements for the view over the town and the plain, and it is the better of the two summits for €12.

The palaces in the town

The National Palace, the one with the two white conical kitchen chimneys in the middle of the town, is the best-preserved medieval royal residence in the country, lived in from the early 15th century to the late 19th: a chapel of King Dinis, the Magpie Room and the Swan Room of João I, Manueline additions, and the room where the deposed Afonso VI was kept from 1676 until he died in 1683; €13. Ten minutes’ walk out of town, the Quinta da Regaleira is the folly of the millionaire António Carvalho Monteiro, built between 1904 and 1910 by the Italian architect Luigi Manini: a neo-Manueline palace and a garden of grottoes, lakes, towers and the inverted-tower “initiation well” that you descend by a spiral stair; €12, open until 18:30.

Monserrate and the Capuchos

Monserrate, 4 km west on the 435 bus, is the Moorish-Gothic villa that the English textile millionaire Francis Cook built in 1858 in a park of tree ferns and lawns, the most beautiful garden in Sintra and the least crowded palace; €12. The Convento dos Capuchos, in the woods towards Colares, is the opposite: a 16th-century friary of tiny cork-lined cells with no electric light, €11, and the quietest place on the mountain. Queluz, the rococo palace of 1750 on the railway line halfway back to Lisbon, is a separate half day.

The coast

Cabo da Roca, 40 minutes from Sintra on the Scotturb 403 bus, is the westernmost point of mainland Europe, a cliff with a lighthouse of 1772, a monument with Camões’s line about where the land ends and the sea begins, and a kiosk selling certificates of your presence. The 403 continues to Cascais, which makes the classic loop. The Sintra tram, restored cars from the early 1900s, runs 45 minutes downhill to the beach at Praia das Maçãs on a limited summer timetable, past the Colares winery whose sand-grown wines are among the rarest in the country.

Food & drink

Sintra’s food is its pastry: the queijadas, small cheese tarts in crisp pastry that the town has made since the Middle Ages, best from the Casa do Preto, and the travesseiros, “pillows” of puff pastry filled with egg and almond cream, from the Piriquita on the street up from the square, where the queue is part of the visit. The restaurants of the old town are priced for day-trippers; the small places by the station, one of them known for its bacalhau, and the tascas of São Pedro are cheaper and better. Two Michelin-starred restaurants at the Penha Longa resort in the hills, one Spanish-run and one Japanese, do tasting menus at around €115 to €145. The Colares wines, from ungrafted vines in the dunes, are tasted at the Adega Regional by appointment.

Nightlife

Sintra is a day trip and behaves like one: the town empties when the last palace shuts, and the evening is a drink at the Hockey Club bar by the Piriquita or a hotel terrace with the castle lit above. That quiet is the reason to stay the night.

When to go

April to June, September to October. The best months: the woods green, the mist lifting by mid-morning, the crowds present but not at their peak; weekdays are much better than weekends.

July to August. Cooler than Lisbon on the hill, often ten degrees, and often in cloud when the coast is clear, which is why the court came; but the busiest weeks by far, with sold-out Pena slots and buses that do not move.

November to March. Wet, foggy and atmospheric, the palaces half empty and the Regaleira grottoes dripping; bring a waterproof, and check that the tram is not closed for maintenance, which it often is.

Getting there

By train. CP suburban trains from Lisbon’s Rossio station every 20 minutes, and from Oriente, Santa Apolónia and Campolide, take about 40 minutes to Sintra station; a return is a few euros on a Navegante card, and bikes travel free. The old town is a ten-minute walk or the first bus stop.

By bus from Cascais. The Scotturb 403 links Cascais and Sintra via Cabo da Roca, about 22 minutes from Cascais to the cape and 40 from the cape to Sintra.

By car. The IC19 from Lisbon ends near the town; parking is abysmal, the roads are narrow and on a holiday weekend the hill is gridlocked, so park in the lots below the town and walk up.

Getting around

The circular buses are the system: the 434 runs one way from the station through the old town to the Moorish castle and Pena and back, the 435 from the station to the Regaleira, Seteais and Monserrate, both about every 20 minutes, with a €13.50 ticket valid all day on both; buy it on board. Tuk-tuks wait in the old town and will take you to the top entrance of Pena; for a family a ride-hail can be cheaper than four bus tickets. The walking trails to the castle and to Monserrate, an hour each from the town, are on the map from the tourist office.

Where to stay

A night in Sintra means the palaces at opening time and the town to yourself after dark. The grand options are the Tivoli Palácio de Seteais, an 18th-century palace on the Monserrate road, and the Tivoli Sintra on the main square with the view of the National Palace; a hostel in a refurbished old palace house on the Rua Sotto Mayor has beds and rooms from €15 to €50 with the castle in the window, and townhouses in the São Miguel villa district and guesthouses in São Pedro fill the middle. The Penha Longa and the Pestana golf resorts are out in the hills for those with a car.

Practical info

All the Parques de Sintra sites, Pena, the Moorish castle, the National Palace, Monserrate and the Capuchos, sell tickets on one website, with combined and advance discounts; the Regaleira sells its own. Most open at 09:30 and close between 19:00 and 20:00 in summer, and the first and last hours are the ones without queues. Bring a layer whatever Lisbon’s weather is doing. The souvenirs are cork, from wallets to umbrellas, and the local ceramics. For money, plugs and pharmacies see the Portugal guide.

Places to visit

Castle

• Castle of the Moors — Eighth-century walls riding the ridge above Sintra

Garden

• Monserrate Palace — Moorish-Gothic villa and the botanical park of an English millionaire
• Quinta da Regaleira — Initiation wells, tunnels and a neo-Manueline palace of symbols

Palace

• Palace of Queluz — Pink Rococo summer palace and gardens between Lisbon and Sintra
• Pena Palace — Ferdinand II’s red and yellow Romantic castle on the summit
• Sintra National Palace — The medieval royal palace with the two conical chimneys

Viewpoint

• Cabo da Roca — The westernmost point of mainland Europe, cliffs and wind