Pena, the National Palace of Sintra, the Moorish Castle or Monserrate: what each visit is

The short answer

These are four different kinds of place, not four versions of one. Pena is a 19th-century Romantic palace on the summit of the hills, inside a large park. The National Palace of Sintra is the royal palace in the middle of the town, built up over several centuries. The Moorish Castle is a line of medieval walls on a peak, mostly an open-air visit. Monserrate is a 19th-century palace set in a botanical park, on the road out of town towards Colares.[7]

All four are run by Parques de Sintra – Monte da Lua and sold as separate tickets.[10] How those tickets work, including Pena's timed palace entry, is in Sintra palace tickets. This page is about what each visit is.

Pena: a palace and its park

Parques de Sintra calls Pena "the romantic, castle-like palace crowning the Sintra hills" and presents the park and palace as one ensemble.[1] The building has two ages. According to the operator's history page, a chapel stood on the site from the 12th century, and in 1503 Manuel I ordered a monastery there, later given to the Order of Saint Jerome; after religious orders were dissolved in 1834 it was abandoned, and in 1838 the consort king Ferdinand II bought it. He kept the old monastery and added a new palace beside it, with parapet walks, lookout towers, a tunnel and a drawbridge, and with Manueline and Moorish references.[2]

Those two wings are still what you visit. The history page says private apartments predominate in the former monastery, the Old Palace, while state rooms are found only in the New Palace. Later, Carlos I and Queen Amélia spent part of the summer season there from the 1890s, and the queen was at Pena when the Republic was declared on 5 October 1910.[2]

The park is half of the visit. Ferdinand II laid out winding paths to landmarks such as the High Cross, the Temple of Columns and the Valley of the Lakes, and planted tree species from every continent across what the operator gives as 85 hectares. The Chalet of the Countess of Edla, which he built with his second wife Elise Hensler, stands on the western side of the park.[2]

The National Palace of Sintra: the palace in the town

The National Palace of Sintra stands in the historic centre, on Largo Rainha D. Amélia, and the operator describes its silhouette as defined by the two conical chimneys over the royal kitchen.[3] It is not one building from one period. The operator describes a set of buildings constructed, added to and adapted over many centuries, and says the date of its founding remains unresolved, with the first building probably from around the 10th or 11th century, under Moorish rule.[3]

The firmer dates are later. The history page gives 1281 for the first document recording a palace on the site, a contract between King Dinis and the free Moors of Colares. João I's works added the kitchen with its chimneys and the Swan Room; under Manuel I came the Hispano-Moresque tiles and the Room of the Coat of Arms. The page says the building's present layout comes broadly from the works of four reigns, Dinis, João I, Manuel I and João III, and that practically every Portuguese king and queen spent time there. Afonso VI was held in the room that bears his name from 1674 until his death, and Queen Maria Pia was the last monarch to live there, leaving for exile in 1910.[4]

The history page also sets out how the palace was first presented. It says the palace opened to the public on a regular, museum-like basis only in the late 1930s, after a decade of works meant to portray an image of Portugal's grandiose past; under the Estado Novo, it adds, this highlighted Portugal's positive role in the globalisation process "even while overlooking the true scale of its impacts".[4]

The Moorish Castle: walls and archaeology

The Moorish Castle is a fortification on one of the peaks of the Sintra hills, founded, its page says, in the 10th century during the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. Its walls run across the hill, with granite blocks fitted between boulders and cliffs, and its parapet walk looks over the town, the Palace of Pena and the Atlantic.[5]

What is inside the walls is archaeology rather than furnished rooms. The operator's history page describes an Islamic quarter with rock-cut silos, the end of Moorish rule in 1147 when Sintra was handed to Afonso Henriques, and a medieval Christian town with the Church of São Pedro de Canaferrim between the two rings of walls, abandoned from the 15th century. Ferdinand II restored the castle in the 19th century, in the Romantic spirit of Pena; excavation has gone on since 1976, and the church now houses the castle's Historical Interpretation Centre.[6]

Monserrate: a palace in a botanical park

Monserrate's later history is a run of British tenants and owners. The operator's history page runs from a hermitage built in 1540, through the British trader Gerard de Visme (the page writes "Gerard of Visme"), who rented the estate in 1789 and built a neo-Gothic castle, to the writer William Beckford, tenant from 1794, and Lord Byron, who wrote of it in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage". In 1863 the British collector Francis Cook became owner of the estate and commissioned the present palace, which the page describes as combining Gothic and Indian influences with Moresque suggestions; the architect, according to the property page, was James Knowles Jr.[7][8]

The park is arranged by the geographic origin of its plants, with a Mexican garden, a Japanese garden, a fern valley and native species among them, laid out by the landscape designer William Stockdale, the botanist William Neville and the master gardener James Burt.[7] The Portuguese government bought the property in 1949; Parques de Sintra took it over in 2000, reopened the palace in 2010 and restored the interiors in view of visitors until 2016.[8] Parques de Sintra's own headquarters are in Monserrate Park.[9] The property page says roof restoration on the palace will continue until the first quarter of 2027, with scaffolding and a temporary covering.[7]

The four side by side

Choosing between them

XTOUR's reading is that each place answers a different interest. Someone drawn to 19th-century Romantic architecture and to walking a designed landscape is asking Pena's question. Someone who wants a palace where the history of the Portuguese monarchy is layered in one building, in the town itself, is asking the National Palace's. The Moorish Castle answers for the medieval and Islamic past and for views from the walls, with little indoors. Monserrate answers for gardens and botanical collections, with a restored 19th-century interior at the centre.

XTOUR does not rank them, does not suggest an order and does not say how many fit into one day. It holds no walking or transport times between them, and the operator's own access advice is on its how-to-get-there pages.

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR does not publish prices, opening hours, accessibility conditions or crowd levels for any of the four. It has not read Parques de Sintra's accessibility page. The descriptions above are the operator's; where the operator itself leaves a question open, as with the founding date of the National Palace of Sintra, XTOUR leaves it open too. For Sintra as a base, see the Sintra destination page.