Sintra

Sintra is thirty minutes from Lisbon by train and several centuries away in atmosphere. The town sits in the Serra de Sintra, a microclimate of its own — cooler, damper, frequently wrapped in a mist that gives the forests and palaces the quality of a half-remembered dream. Portuguese royalty chose this as their summer retreat, and over the centuries they built palaces here that range from the merely beautiful to the genuinely unhinged. Lord Byron called it a “glorious Eden,” which is the kind of thing Byron said about places, but in this case he was not exaggerating by much.

The Palácio da Pena is the centerpiece — a 19th-century Romanticist confection perched on the highest point of the serra, painted in reds and yellows and blues that should clash horribly and somehow cohere into something magnificent. King Ferdinand II, a German prince married into Portuguese royalty, designed it as a fantasy of every architectural style that had ever caught his eye: Moorish arches, Gothic turrets, Manueline flourishes, and a triton carved above the entrance that watches visitors with an expression of permanent surprise. The interior is preserved as the royal family left it in 1910 — breakfast dishes on the table, books on the shelves — which gives the whole place the feel of a palace whose occupants stepped out for a moment and never returned.

Below Pena, the Castelo dos Mouros — a ruined Moorish fortress from the 8th century — offers the best views in Sintra if you are willing to climb. The walls snake along the ridgeline through the forest, and from the highest tower, the Atlantic is visible on clear days, a thin line of silver beyond the green. The Quinta da Regaleira is the estate I return to most often — not a royal palace but the fantasy of a wealthy Brazilian-Portuguese merchant, António Monteiro, who hired an Italian architect to build his vision of a garden of earthly mysteries. The Initiation Well — a spiral staircase descending nine levels into the earth, modeled on Dante’s Inferno — is the single most atmospheric piece of architecture I have encountered in Portugal. At the bottom, you cross underground tunnels that emerge beside a waterfall. It is theatrical, symbolic, and deeply strange.

The town itself has a charm that survives the day-trip crowds. The National Palace — the one with the two conical chimneys visible from everywhere — occupies the main square and is worth entering for the Sala dos Brasões alone, its domed ceiling painted with the coats of arms of Portuguese noble families. The travesseiros (pillow-shaped pastries) from Piriquita are the local specialty, and I have never managed to eat fewer than three. For lunch, avoid the tourist restaurants on the main drag and walk uphill to Incomum — the tasting menu draws on Portuguese tradition with enough invention to justify the climb.

When to go: April to June or September to October. Summer brings massive crowds — Sintra is Lisbon’s most popular day trip, and it shows. Go early on a weekday if possible. The mist that often wraps the serra in autumn and winter is half the atmosphere.