Pena Palace

The story of Pena Palace

Pena Palace is a Romanticist palace in the town of Sintra, and its most striking feature is the way it mixes styles on a hilltop above the town. It is a national monument, part of the Cultural Landscape of Sintra, and one of Portugal’s best-known heritage sites.

Its story begins much earlier than the 19th-century palace. On this hill there was first a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Pena, and later a monastery was built here and donated to the Order of Saint Jerome. For centuries, Pena was a small place for meditation, housing a maximum of eighteen monks. In the 18th century the monastery was damaged by lightning, and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake reduced it to ruins.

The modern palace came after that ruin. Built in 1838 for Ferdinand II of Portugal, with Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege named as architect, it reflects the exotic taste of Romanticism. The design deliberately combines Neo-Gothic, Neo-Manueline, Neo-Islamic and Neo-Renaissance elements. Much of that variety became visible during major renovations in the 1840s, and the clock tower was completed in 1843.

Visitors can still read the older monastery inside the newer work. The preserved remains include the cloister, the dining room, the sacristy, and the Manueline-Renaissance chapel, all embedded in the palace’s new section. The structure is divided into four parts: the foundations and enclosing walls with two gateways, one with a drawbridge; the restored convent; the Arches Yard in front of the chapel; and the palatial zone with its cylindrical bastion.

The palace interiors were adapted as a summer residence for the royal family, and today the site is also used for state occasions by the President of the Portuguese Republic and other government officials. When you visit, the Queen’s Terrace is the place to take in the overall composition, including the sundial cannon that used to fire every day at noon.