Sintra is a 40 minute train from Lisbon (a meagre €5 return) and the train comes every 15 minutes - both things that make visiting Sintra easy to visit. It also ensures that Sintra is crowded with tourists, even if it's pouring with rain. Ask me how I know! The minute I stepped outside of the train station, it started to shower. And of course, I didn't have a jacket and had declined the umbrella loan from my hostel. Oops. Well, for €2 I bought a clear plastic rain poncho. Not exactly a haute couture look, but practical nonetheless. I was grateful that my backpack has a built-in rain cover. I caught one of the many buses that does the "castle loop" around Sintra (bus no. 343 for those of you who are interested).
Sintra is home to several summer palaces. I think the royals and nobility of Portugal wanted a break from the muggy, busy summers in Lisbon, and Sintra is both beautiful and far away enough from the capital that it made an ideal location. Heck, even their city hall looks like a palace:
Below: the royal summer palace in Sintra. I didn't go inside, I only had a day in Sintra and my palace "dance card" was full.
First stop, the park & Palace of Pena, which was originally the site of a monastery until 1838 when the religious orders of Portugal were abolished. The site was purchased by Don Fernando II, King consort to Queen Dona Maria II. Don Fernando was known as the "artist king" like his cousin Prince Albert of Colberg (who married Queen Victoria), and he poured money into the palace at Pena to add a new wing to the existing monastic structure and beautifed it. The hill was originally barren, and he commissioned gardeners to plant trees and plants over its 85 hectares. Looking at the site now, it's impossible to imagine it had ever been barren.
Above: the bust of Don Fernando II - cousin to both Queen Victoria & Prince Albert. He looks rather Portugese here, but paintings of him show his characteristic German features.
Next two photos: from the "new palace" (the new addition being ocre yellow, and the monastic portion retained it's red colour). Note the Arabic influence - Fernando II incorporated the romanticism of the east, which was the style "du jour" at the time (also evident in the furnishings and room décor of the palace) while refurbishing this palace. The "merman," above one of the entrances is supposed to represent a different spin on the creation myth despite his ominous appearance.
Please don't smite me!
When it's not pouring with rain/misty beyond belief, the palace at Pena looks like this (from the air, of course):
At the same time, the mist only heightened the fairy tale nature of the palace. I just wish I could've gotten a better shot of the building. Still, I was glad to get inside the palace and be immersed in this private family-centred palace. The royals lived here until 1910, although the state acquired the place in 1889.
I don't have to tell you that the rooms in the palace at Pena are stunning, I'll let the photos show you instead...
Below: the courtyard off the main entrance.
Below: the Arabic room. This room was gorgeous. The photo does not do it justice. One must simply stand in this room to feel its full effect. The walls are painted to look like an Arabic palace, and all the furnishing reflect this style.
Below: sculpted plasterwork in the ballroom. This room was never used as a formal ballroom, instead it was used to entertain guests with games and music etc. Nary a ball was held here. A shame, I think. But then again, I never did live here. If I had, I would have held a ball just to spend more time in this room. All the walls and the ceiling are covered with this intricate sculpted paster. Stunning!
Below: me rocking my very unsexy plastic rain poncho under the shelter of a minaret.
Above and below: scenes from the park at Pena. Like being inside of a fairy tale.
Above: the Chimera fountain that holds court over the café on site. I had a very nice cup of tea and a cinnamon & sugar crêpe. All that was missing was maple syrup (a Canadian to the core, I suppose).
Below: the Temple of Columns within the park. Definitely reminiscent of Greceian temples. Another great example of romanticism at the time (mid-1800's).
Second stop, the summer mansion and fantastical gardens of Quinta da Regaleira. This site is a mere ten minute walk straight ahead of the tourist office in Sintra (no bus needed). This is the site that has that inverted spiral tower that got me interested in Sintra. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This estate changed hands numerous times over the course of its history (starting in the 17th century CE) until 1997 when the Municipality of Sintra acquired it from the Japanese corporation Aoki.
Quinta da Regeleira was originally just a manor house with some gardens, but when António Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro purchased the site in 1893 at a public auction, the site became something else. I can only say that my impression of the entire site is that it is a place of alchemical harmony, spiritual transformation made real through artiface and allegorical statues, and that I came out of the place transformed. I actually spent more time wandering the garden of this site than I did the entire site at Pena. I can only imagine what it was like to live there for a few months of the year. A kind of manufactured fantasy in the highest atheistic taste as it were.
Mr. Monteiro hired the landscape architect Henri Lusseau but rejected his French neo-gothic designs, and in 1898, he hired a set-designer and architect Luigi Manini - who was responsible for other palace works in Portugal. Luigi designed absolutely everything in the Quinta de Regeleira. And I mean everything! The gardens, the grottos, the chapel, the mansion's furnishings - down to the last chair and door knocker. The result it's a very harmonious site that is hard to put into words. Again, I'll let the photos tell the story.
Above: the mansion at Quinta da Regaleira. To this day, visitors are not permitted to go up into the top of the round tower as that was Carvalho Monteiro's laboratory/study. It maintains an air of alchemist mystic to this day.
Below: a beautiful door designed by Manini that decorates a wall in the dining room of the mansion house at Quinta.
Below: the family chapel, also designed and commissioned by Luigi Manini. The all-seeing eye was present over the threshold (not pictured here), and there is a tunnel under the chapel as well.
Below: the "Lake of the Waterfall." There are hidden pathways behind the waterfall (a part of the tunnel grotto system ubiquitous in the gardens). Rather idyllic, don't you think?
Next two photos: As above/So below... The "Iniation Well" aka the inverted spiral tower down into the earth. The path is made of 8 levels of 15 steps (so 480 steps, 4 + 8 = 12, and 1 + 2 = 3, a magical number). If you travel down downwards, you walk towards toward mystery and obscurity towards the four cardinal points. If you travel upwards, you climb towards heaven and enlightenment. Some people make connections to Dante's circles of hell/heaven. Either way, it was definitely something walking the spiral. I'll leave you to guess which direction I walked ;)
Below: Manini's plans for the inverted tower. There are secret tunnel entrances to the tower, which is how I discovered it first. It's nearly impossible to find above ground.
Other than the Grotto of the Virgin, I walked all the tunnels within the gardens of Quinta da Regaleira. All of the tunnels are man-made, and planned out by Manini. Genius really. You enter one grotto, only to end up far away from where you started. I had to double check the map a few times - I'm where now?
Above: I found the tunnel that lead to the other side of the waterfall.
Below: the other side of the duck pond from inside the labyrinth grotto. No, I'm not giving away the path to getting there. You'll have to go yourself. Bring a flashlight!
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