Castles in the Sky-Discover Sintra’s Pena Palace & Moorish Castle

Begin your tour at Pena Palace, the most famous landmark in Sintra. Arrive at your timed entry and walk through the colorful terraces before entering the palace interior. The palace was built in the 19th century by King Ferdinand II on the ruins of a former monastery and is considered one of the finest examples of Romantic architecture in Europe. As you move through the rooms, you’ll see the preserved royal chambers, dining halls, and decorative tiles that reflect Portugal’s royal lifestyle before the monarchy ended in 1910. Outside, the palace terraces provide panoramic views across the hills of Sintra and toward the Atlantic Ocean. The bright red and yellow towers you see today were intentionally designed to evoke fantasy castles, mixing Moorish, Gothic, and Manueline architectural elements.

After leaving Pena Palace, follow the downhill forest path toward the Moorish Castle. This short walk takes you through Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, a protected landscape of dense woodland and granite hills. The cool, shaded trails are part of the historic parkland created around the palace during the 19th century. As you walk, you’ll notice how the palace occasionally appears through the trees above you, emphasizing how dramatically it sits on the ridge of the mountain.

Your final stop is the Moorish Castle, a medieval fortress originally built in the 8th and 9th centuries during the Islamic rule of the Iberian Peninsula. The castle once served as a strategic lookout point controlling access to the surrounding region. After the Christian reconquest in the 12th century, it gradually fell into ruin until it was restored in the 19th century alongside the construction of Pena Palace. Walk along the castle’s stone ramparts and towers, which stretch across the mountain ridge like a defensive wall. From here you’ll get some of the best views in Sintra: the colorful towers of Pena Palace above you, the historic town below, and on clear days the Atlantic coastline in the distance. The climb along the walls can be steep, but the panoramic viewpoints make it one of the most rewarding stops in the region.