Pena Palace

Interesting facts

A cross has marked the nearby High Cross, at 528 metres the highest point of the Sintra hills, since King John III first raised one in 1522.

The present High Cross is a replica carved in 2008 from a single block of limestone, after lightning destroyed Ferdinand II's Manueline-style cross in 1997.

The original chapel on the peak was built in the Middle Ages after a reported apparition of the Virgin Mary, and King John II came here on pilgrimage in 1493.

Before the 1755 earthquake ruined it, the old monastery had already been badly damaged by a lightning strike in the 18th century.

The great window on the main facade was modelled on the celebrated Manueline window of the Convent of the Order of Christ in Tomar.

The chapel's marble and alabaster altarpiece, saved from the old monastery, is attributed to the Renaissance sculptor Nicolau Chanterene.

Ferdinand II left the palace to his second wife, the opera singer Elise Hensler, Countess of Edla, and the Portuguese state bought it in 1889.

In 1864–1869 Ferdinand and the Countess of Edla built themselves a separate Alpine-style chalet on an eight-hectare plot in the western part of the park.

A bronze warrior statue by Ernesto Rusconi, cast in 1848, stands on a rocky outcrop facing the palace across the wooded slope.

The park's collection includes North American sequoias, Chinese ginkgos and Japanese cryptomerias, and a Queen's Fern Garden of Australian and New Zealand tree ferns.

Why it is worth it

Pena Palace looks like a dream that someone decided to build. From the woods above Sintra it rises on a rocky peak in a jumble of towers, domes, crenellations and terraces, painted in strong ochre yellow and deep red, with a clock tower, onion-topped turrets and battlements that seem to belong to five different countries at once. It is one of the most flamboyant monuments of European Romanticism, and it was built by a king consort with an artist's temperament.

The site was first a small Hieronymite monastery dedicated to Our Lady of Pena, which the great earthquake of 1755 left in ruins. In 1838 Ferdinand II, king consort of Queen Maria II, bought the ruins together with the surrounding land and commissioned the German mining engineer and amateur architect Baron Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege to turn them into a summer residence. Work ran from 1842 to 1854, though the main structure stood by 1847. Ferdinand and Eschwege mixed neo-Gothic, neo-Manueline, neo-Islamic and neo-Renaissance forms without embarrassment, and kept as much of the old monastery as they could, including its cloister, refectory, sacristy and Manueline-Renaissance chapel, embedded inside the new palace. Above the Triton Arch a mythological triton, an allegory of the creation of the world, glowers over the approach.

The palace was one of the last homes of the Portuguese monarchy: Queen Amélie spent her last night in Portugal here before going into exile in 1910, after which the palace became a national monument and museum. Its colours had long faded to grey before restoration brought back the original yellow and red. Around it Ferdinand planted Pena Park, more than 200 hectares of paths, lakes and trees gathered from across the world, which frames the building as carefully as any painting. Pena belongs to the Cultural Landscape of Sintra, inscribed by UNESCO in 1995, and was voted one of the Seven Wonders of Portugal.

Getting there

The palace crowns a hill about 2 km above the historic centre of Sintra. Trains from Lisbon's Rossio station reach Sintra in about 40 minutes, and from Sintra station bus 434 runs a loop up to the Moorish Castle and Pena Palace and back through the town. The nearest airport is Cascais Airport (CAT), about 8 km away, which handles mainly light aircraft; most visitors arrive through Lisbon and continue by train.

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia

The Pena Palace is a Romanticist palace in São Pedro de Penaferrim, in the municipality of Sintra, on the Portuguese Riviera. The castle stands on the top of a hill in the Sintra Mountains above the town of Sintra, and on a clear day it can be easily seen from Lisbon and much of its metropolitan area. It is a national monument and constitutes one of the major expressions of 19th-century Romanticism in the world. The palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the Seven Wonders of Portugal. It is also used for state occasions by the President of the Portuguese Republic and other government officials.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia