Sintra’s Pena Palace in Portugal

Welcome back to another travel recap post of my trip to Portugal last month! You may remember that my Mom and I did a day trip from Lisbon to Sintra and spent the majority of the day on bikes.  However, during our bike tour of Sintra we nicely negotiated with our tour guide Daniel to skip a long lunch in favor of actually getting to visit the inside of the Pena Palace in Portugal. 

This palace is arguable the most famous in all of Sintra and when I foudn out the original bike route just had us visiting from a distance and I was quite determined to not only visit the grounds but also have the chance to see inside. 

This castle in Sintra has many names but in this post I will refer to Romanticist castle as Pena Palace.  Despite being built in 1836 it was not until 1995 that it and t the rest of Sintra were classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.  The way the castle is described by some of the placards is almost comical, for instance, “the fruit of King Ferdinand II’s creative genius and the greatest expression of 19th-century romanticism in Portugal, denoting clear influences from the Manueline and Moorish styles of architecture.”  Ummm, sure?  To me it was just absolutely stunning and I loved the contrast of the bright yellow and red outside with the blue tile work of other parts of the building.

From where we parked our bikes it was a half mile up hill trek through the gardens to get to the base of the palace.  Unlike so many things that are only for looks this was clearly functioning with the massive there story walls, the moat, the drawbridge, and the incredible elevation. We explored the outside of the Pena Palace before joining the very long line to see the luxe furnishings of the very small rooms inside. Even compared to some of the places I visited in the past like (here, here, here) these rooms were quite small. 

What do you think of the Pena Palace in Portugal?