Souvenir Chronicles: PORTUGAL: SINTRA'S PENA PALACE

June 23, 2022

After our first night of blissful sleep in Lisbon, I walked down to breakfast in the hotel and passed under a waterfall coming from the ceiling. Apparently it was part of the "little leak" that had set of our alarms the previous evening.

After a very quick breakfast, we walked to another hotel two blocks away to be picked up for a small group day-trip to Sintra, a beautiful town about 17 miles west-northwest of Lisbon that is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We met our guide, Filipa, there, and then picked up another couple from Great Britain and a family of four from Northern California. As is usually our experience on tours like these, everyone turned out to be very nice, and we had a wonderful day together.

Anticipating crowds later in the day, Filipa drove straight to Sintra's main attraction, Pena National Palace, built on top of and around an early 16-century monastery in the 1800s by Ferdinand II, King of Portugal from 1837-1853.

We began with a lovely walk from our parking spot through Pena Park, a rather dense forest of trees from all over the world. In fact, there are 500 different species, including some giant redwoods from California.

Doesn't that look like Narnia's lamppost on the left?

I was not quite prepared for our first views of the colorful palace. Gold, blue, purple, black, red--I'd never seen anything like it before. Each section was a different architectural style and a different color.

Information at the site read: "In 1838, with his own personal fortune, King Ferdinand II acquired the former Hieronymite Monastery of Our Lady of Pena located on the second highest point in the Sintra hills. He then embarked on a restoration and expansion project that resulted in the Palace of Pena."

King Ferdinand II in 1861

"Within this large scale project, he drew upon memories of the Portuguese voyages of exploration, integrated influences from the Middle Ages, Classical and Manueline architecture alongside a diverse range of other themes and motivations. The palace reflects the taste for the sublime, for grandiose landscapes and the mastery of nature as regards the fragility of the human condition among other feelings particular to Romanticism."

FYI, King Ferdinand II was a first cousin to Leopold II of Belgium, Empress Carlota of Mexico, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her husband Prince Albert. He and his first wife Queen Maria had ELEVEN children. Maria died in childbirth, and Ferdinand outlived eight of the children. Thirteen years after Maria's death, Ferdinand remarried a Swiss-born American actress, Elisa Hensler. They had no children.

The variety of materials and exquisite detail make it hard to "move along."

No matter what direction I looked, there was another beautiful something.

It's impossible that I had never heard of this palace before, but I hadn't.

Speaking of detail, check out this entrance to the Queen's Terrace. The framing of the arched doorway is stone coral.

Over the doorway, seemingly holding up the window, is a grotesque figure that is half-man, half-fish. Some sources say he is Neptune or Poseidon, others say he is a mythological triton symbolizing the creation of the world, and still others say he is a newt, or a creature that lives in both land and water. A tree is growing out of his head, and he sits in a scalloped shell. (If I were queen, I don't know if I would be relieved or disturbed to have this figure guarding my quarters.)

The exterior walls are covered with hand-painted tiles--thousands of the same design.

This ceiling is of Moorish design . . .

. . . right down to the Arabic script that borders the bottom edge.

Much of the original monastery was severely damaged in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, but when Ferdinand the II saw it in 1838, he was enchanted by its stunning views and surrounding grounds. He built his palace around what was left of the monastery, and the resulting profusion of colors and designs is magical--fit for a princess.

The one part of the palace that escaped significant damage in the 1755 earthquake was the chapel, which King Ferdinand retained as the chapel in his redesigned palace.

The nave has the pointed arches common to the period, and the apse and choir are covered by vaulted ribbed arches.

An alabaster and black limestone altarpiece is the star attraction of the chapel. It was completed between 1528 and 1532 by the French sculptor Nicolas Chanterenne.

Various scenes from the life of Christ are depicted, but my favorite is this image of Christ being borne up by angels. I love the tenderness, and I love how Christ's foot falls over the edge, touching the top of the structure below him.

It is possible to tour other rooms in the palace, but we only had one day in Sintra and had other places to go, so our time was limited, and what we had we chose to spend outside.

For the record, I would take this over Bavaria's Neuschwanstein Castle any day.

In spite of its complicated architecture, it is possible to walk around the upper castle walls.

We could see for miles. What a view!

Parts of the palace encompass or are built into and around the rocky precipices of the mountain.

In the distance, we could see the ruins of a castle built by the Moors in the 8th and 9th centuries, property also acquired and restored by King Ferdinand II but now a national monument. From another viewpoint we could see another "castle" of recent vintage built as a personal residence