The Pena Palace
A colourful romanticist castle on the hilltop — turrets, drawbridges and the finest view to the Atlantic.
Sintra
Fairytale palaces in the cool hills
Best time
April – June & September – October
Gentle pace
2–3 slow days
Ideal for
Families · Castle lovers · Day-trippers from Lisbon
Sintra is a hill town of palaces — a cool, forested ridge above Lisbon where Portuguese kings built summer residences of impossible colour and fantasy: the yellow-and-red Pena Palace, the mossy Quinta da Regaleira, the fairytale Monserrate. It is the most magical day trip from Lisbon, and worth a night or two of its own.
With children, take the 434 bus up to Pena Palace, explore the initiation well at Regaleira, and walk in the cool gardens between the palaces. Go early — Sintra is popular, and the lanes fill by mid-morning.
Worth lingering over
Quinta da Regaleira
A mysterious garden of grottos, tunnels and a spiral initiation well children love to descend.
The old town & a queijada
Wander the lanes between palaces and try a Sintra cheesecake — a small, sweet tradition.
Hidden gem
The Convent of the Capuchos
Deep in the forest of the Sintra hills, far from the crowds at Pena, lies the Convento dos Capuchos — a tiny 16th-century Franciscan monastery carved into the rock, its cells and chapel so small that the friars could barely stand, covered in moss and hidden among the trees. Most visitors never make it here; those who do step through a boulder into a silent, green, otherworldly place that feels a thousand miles from the palaces above.