Pena Palace Portugal

Legendary

A colorful hilltop palace King Ferdinand II built from monastery ruins.

Photo by ajay_suresh

Every color on this palace was chosen on purpose, and then forgotten. When the palace was restored in the 1990s, workers found the original bright reds and yellows under a century of gray paint.

King Ferdinand II had wanted people to see it from far away. On a clear day, you can spot it from Lisbon, nearly 30 kilometers off.

The story starts long before Ferdinand. A small chapel stood on this hilltop in the Sintra Mountains as far back as the 1100s, and in 1503 King Manuel I built a monastery around it for a group of monks.

For 250 years the monks lived quietly on the mountain. Then, in November 1755, the Great Lisbon Earthquake struck.

The earthquake was one of the most destructive in history. It wrecked much of Lisbon, and up on the hill it left the monastery badly damaged, though the small chapel survived.

The monks never really recovered. In 1834, Portugal closed all its monasteries, and the ruins were abandoned.

Four years later, a German-born prince named Ferdinand bought them. He had married Portugal's Queen Maria II in 1836, and he wanted a summer home for the royal family.

Ferdinand was an artist at heart, and the project grew far beyond a summer home. He hired a mining engineer, Baron Wilhelm von Eschwege, and together they built a palace that mixed every style Ferdinand loved.

There are Gothic towers, Moorish arches, a drawbridge, and a clock tower painted yellow. The old monastery is still in there, painted deep red, with its cloister and dining hall kept intact.

Building ran from 1842 to 1854. The result was one of the first Romantic palaces in Europe, finished 15 years before work even began on Neuschwanstein in Germany.

Ferdinand also planted a forest around it, with trees from around the world. UNESCO named the whole area a World Heritage Site in 1995.

Walk out onto the terraces for views across the Sintra Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. Look for the carved sea monster over the arch of the Triton Gate, half man and half fish. Then wander the park below, where ferns and giant trees hide a valley of small lakes.