Are you about to travel to Portugal and wondering which town to visit near Lisbon? Besides the beautiful Tomar and its Templar castle, I can only recommend that you visit Sintra, the wonderfully colourful Portuguese town in the district of Lisbon, about thirty kilometres from the capital.
Among the things to see in Sintra there is of course its beautiful castle, its palaces in extravagant colours and its gentle hills covered in centuries-old pines. But the finest thing about Sintra is the landscape, so striking that it became a World Heritage Site in 1995 under the name Cultural Landscape of Sintra.
After all, there must be a reason why the Portuguese kings chose it as their summer residence for centuries, don’t you think?
For exactly that reason, among the things to see in Sintra you will find a great many royal and noble palaces. As happened everywhere else in Europe, the nobility moved along with the king’s court, and so Sintra became the holiday destination of the entire Portuguese aristocracy.
In short, if the streets of Lisbon haven’t worn you out yet, you should know that to visit Sintra you will need a good dose of energy, to walk and to uncover the beauty hidden inside its magnificent palaces.
Would you like to know the 5 things you absolutely cannot miss?
Let’s go!
1 – The National Palace
As soon as you step into the historic centre of the town, you will come across one of the first things to see in Sintra. It is the National Palace, a beautiful building whose great construction season is owed to King João I (John I) around 1415, on top of an earlier palace from the Moorish period, and which was then decisively enlarged by Manuel I between the late fifteenth and the early sixteenth century.
The National Palace of Sintra is certainly one of the oldest and most important in town, but I recommend it to you for one very specific reason. The alterations made to the structure make it truly unusual. Just think that inside you will find a great many different styles, including Gothic, the Manueline style I also told you about in my guide to the Convento de Cristo in Tomar, and the Moorish and Mudéjar legacy you can read above all in the tilework and the ceilings.
The surprising thing is that all these styles coexist in perfect harmony with one another, together with the magnificent azulejos you will find both in the garden and in almost every room of the palace.
Hey, but what are those two enormous white cones you can see from outside?
They are the unmistakable signature of the National Palace of Sintra. I wondered about them too, right until the end of my visit, when I walked into the kitchens and understood: they are the two giant chimneys that carried away the smoke from the fires on which the palace’s expert cooks delighted the king’s guests.
From the outside I would never have guessed.
Inside, the palace is extraordinarily rich in detail and decoration. It is no coincidence that it remained a residence of the Portuguese royal family until the end of the nineteenth century, before the fall of the monarchy in 1910 turned it into a national monument.
Among the things not to miss, I suggest you look for the famous Sala das Pegas, the magpie room, where these birds are painted over and over with the motto por bem in their beaks. The story goes that João I, caught by the queen while kissing a lady-in-waiting, had one magpie painted for every lady of the palace, to silence the gossip of the court with irony. It is an anecdote the guides love to tell and that no document confirms, but it captures the atmosphere of the place perfectly.
Do also pay particular attention to the beauty of the azulejos, one of the most important collections after the museum in Lisbon.
But that’s not all!
If you can tear your eyes away from the beautiful tiles, you will discover that the ceilings of the National Palace of Sintra are particularly lovely too. The most famous is the one in the Sala dos Brasões, the coats of arms hall: a wooden coffered dome built between 1515 and 1518, bearing the 72 coats of arms of the king and of the Portuguese noble families.
In short, this is definitely a compulsory stop if you want to visit Sintra and start discovering its fascinating history. The palace stands on Largo Rainha Dona Amélia, right in the middle of the historic centre, so you won’t have any trouble finding it.
Prices and opening hours (2026): the “essential” visit to the palace costs €13 for an adult, while the gardens can be visited free of charge; opening hours are 9:30am to 6:30pm, with last admission an hour earlier. Always check the Parques de Sintra website before you set off, as prices change from year to year. In the afternoon you will find far more tourists, so it is worth arriving early.
2 – The Quinta da Regaleira
Although its appearance might mislead you, the Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra is a palace built between 1904 and 1910 by the Italian Luigi Manini, and it includes a beautiful garden, grottoes and two mysterious wells. It stands very close to the historic centre of the town, so it won’t be hard to reach after visiting the National Palace.
This is certainly one of the most enigmatic buildings in Sintra, and it is particularly interesting for its legends and its many references to esotericism. Outside, the estate covers more than 4 hectares of grounds where, besides the splendid palace, you will also find beautiful little lakes and small temples.
The beauty of this place is such that, since 1995, it too has fallen within the perimeter of the Cultural Landscape of Sintra protected by UNESCO.
Most tourists who visit the Quinta da Regaleira are rather taken with the extravagant style of the architecture, but they don’t know that the most interesting attraction isn’t above ground but below it. Yes, because this is where you find the two very famous spiral wells, linked to initiation rites probably inspired by Freemasonry and the Templars, which every year draw thousands of visitors from all over the world.
Now here is something not to miss!
At the top of one of the wells stands the Capela da Santíssima Trindade. From here you can take a long staircase that leads you inside the monumental initiation well, all the way down to one of the crypts. At the bottom of the well you will reach the entrance to a grotto from which you can see one of the loveliest lakes on the estate.
I found it a unique place and I really recommend visiting it!
Fancy going deeper?
Then you will find more information in this guide, where I talk specifically about the Quinta da Regaleira, with everything to see and the most interesting curiosities.
Prices and opening hours (2026): the Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra is open every day, from April to September 9:30am to 8:00pm and for the rest of the year until 6:00pm. A full adult ticket costs around €20, with reductions for young people and over 65s. Watch out for one detail that confuses many people: the estate is privately owned, so its ticket is separate from the Parques de Sintra ones and is not included in any combined ticket.
If you are based in Lisbon I also recommend this tour which, as well as Sintra, will take you to discover Cabo da Roca and Cascais.
3 – Palácio da Pena and its treasures
Have you ever visited a castle that is blue, red, yellow and grey (and no, I’m not talking about Disneyland!)?
Among the things to see in Sintra, the Palácio da Pena left me truly astonished precisely because of the unusual colours of this striking building, created at the wish of King Ferdinand II and entrusted to Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, a German who by profession was a mining engineer and a lieutenant-general rather than an architect: a detail that explains a great deal about the imaginative, unconstrained character of the building.
The Pena Palace is relatively recent: Ferdinand II bought the site in 1838 and the works were carried out between 1842 and 1854, with the building practically finished as early as 1847. Before him, up there stood a monastery of the Hieronymite order ordered by Manuel I at the beginning of the sixteenth century, built where in the Middle Ages there had been a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Pena; the 1755 earthquake reduced it to ruins. The interiors are very beautiful, the furnishings are perfectly preserved and the landscape you can enjoy from the top is incredible.
Perhaps you didn’t know it, but this is one of the most important tourist attractions in the whole of Portugal, so much so that it is one of the Seven Wonders of Portugal, because it represents a splendid example of nineteenth-century Romantic architecture.
But what is there to see?
Well, the interior is beautifully looked after, with the rooms laid out as the royal family left them and a great many very characteristic pieces of furniture. The most interesting part, however, is probably the splendid terraces overlooking the woods of the Parque da Pena. Here you will find plenty of mythological statues as well as the splendid decorations on the ramparts, including the famous triton that looms over the entrance arch.
If the colours of the terraces still look bright and vivid to you, we owe it to the restoration work of the late 1990s. The original red and yellow colouring had in fact faded over the years until the building looked grey, and the Palácio da Pena in Sintra had lost part of its distinctive charm.
And the garden outside?
The park surrounding the castle is immense and, here too, you can genuinely lose hours. You will find woods and hidden paths, but the thing that will really take your breath away are the many viewpoints, perfectly in line with the Romantic ideals of the period.
Prices and opening hours (2026): the “essential” visit with palace and park costs €20, while the park alone costs €12 and gives you access to the gardens and the outer terraces but not to the rooms. The park opens 9:00am to 7:00pm and the palace 9:30am to 6:30pm, with last admission an hour earlier. Here entry to the palace works on timed slots and this is the busiest monument in Sintra, so booking the palace and park ticket online isn’t a luxury: it is how you avoid losing half a day in a queue.
4 – Castelo dos Mouros, ruins from antiquity
Among the things to see in Sintra don’t let the Castelo dos Mouros slip past you, the ancient Moorish stronghold, which the Muslims built between the eighth and ninth centuries, long before the Christian reconquest of the Iberian peninsula.
Today the Moorish Castle of Sintra appears as a ruined castle and stands within the lush forests of the Serra de Sintra. It has an important, and curious, history: it was never taken by force. When Afonso Henriques conquered Lisbon in 1147, the garrison of Sintra realised there was no point in holding out and surrendered voluntarily. From then on the castle lost every military function and slowly fell into disuse.
The structure, as you will see with your own eyes, was restored in the nineteenth century. The credit goes to King Ferdinand II, who from 1840 funded the works every year, entrusted here too to von Eschwege: he consolidated the walls, reforested the slopes and preserved the chapel, choosing to protect the castle without altering its architecture too much, so as to keep its charm as an ancient ruin.
Why visit it?
The Moorish Castle is hugely important for this region of Portugal. It became a National Monument in 1910 and has been protected by UNESCO since 1995 because it is part of the Cultural Landscape of Sintra. I promise you that the spectacle from its ramparts, at around 471 metres above sea level, is worth not only the price of the ticket but the trip to Portugal itself.
From here you can see the finest palaces of Sintra, the town hall and the splendid hills. You will also enjoy a unique view of the Atlantic Ocean, from an extremely privileged position.
All right, but how do you get there?
If you want to visit the Moorish Castle you should know that it isn’t in the centre of Sintra but on the ridge of the Serra that dominates the town, a few kilometres uphill. To reach it you can take bus 434, because the route across the hills is rather steep. The tourist bus leaves from the railway station, crosses the centre of Sintra and then reaches the Moorish Castle and the Pena Palace, following a one-way loop.
Prices and opening hours (2026): the entrance ticket for the Moorish Castle costs €12 for an adult and opening hours are 9:30am to 6:00pm, with last admission at 5:30pm. Compared with the other monuments, the castle is the one that copes best even with a windy day: it is entirely outdoors, so judge it by the weather.
5 – The panoramic walk: my experience
Sintra was quite an adventure for me.
After visiting the first two castles (strictly on foot, including getting between them), I set off towards the Pena Palace, delighted to be able to take the panoramic walk that the signs and my guidebook mentioned. Bear in mind that I had a very heavy bag and was wearing leather sandals utterly unsuited to a trekking route, and that I realised only far too late that what I thought was a stroll was in fact a proper forest trail.
A real climb!
Unless you have suitable shoes, I would absolutely advise you against taking this path!
At times I thought I had got lost in the woods because there were no more signs, at others I nearly slipped, but it was too late to turn back and do the same stretch downhill. It was not pleasant to find myself alone in the forest without knowing where to go and with no phone signal. In short, I didn’t fully enjoy my visit to the Pena Palace because of the tiredness and the effort it had taken me to get there.
I never worked out whether I took the wrong route and picked the climb instead of the walk, distracted by the beauty of the landscape. Either way, be careful!
All the same, the landscapes I got to admire during my trudge were genuinely enchanting.
Visiting Sintra means this too!
Practical information about Sintra
Getting to Sintra from Lisbon is very easy. The two towns are well connected by the train, which leaves from Rossio or Oriente and takes about forty minutes to reach its destination.
Once in Sintra, you can choose whether to go on foot, take the tourist bus or hire something like a bicycle. I did the whole thing on foot and by the end of the day I couldn’t take another step, so I recommend the tourist bus.
The bus stops at all the points of interest along the town’s punishing climbs. The 434 day ticket costs €13.50 (with a small discount if you buy it online) and the buses run roughly every fifteen minutes: I strongly recommend it, unless you are an expert climber.
On entrance tickets, bear two things in mind. The first is that the monuments run by Parques de Sintra (National Palace, Pena, Moorish Castle, Monserrate) have combined tickets that pay off if you visit at least two. The second is that the Quinta da Regaleira, being private, always stays outside those combinations and has to be paid for separately.
One practical tip on how to order your day: start at Pena as soon as it opens, when the coaches from Lisbon haven’t arrived yet, then come down to the Moorish Castle and finish in the centre with the National Palace and the Quinta. Conversely, turning up at Pena in the middle of the morning means running into the worst queue of the day.
Another piece of advice I feel like giving you, if you would rather not think about anything, is to book the full-day panoramic tour. Sadly I didn’t know about it during my visit and had the bad luck of finding out only once I got home. It is a tour that, as well as taking you to the finest palaces of Sintra, will also take you along the coast of Portugal.
Here you can discover the beautiful Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point of Europe, and carry on to reach the Estoril Coast with the villages of Cascais and Oeiras.
Quite an adventure, in short.
And you, which of Sintra’s palaces intrigues you most: the Pena with its impossible colours, or the initiation wells of the Regaleira?
