The best things to do in Sintra are Pena Palace, Quinta da Regaleira, the Moorish Castle and Monserrate, all inside one forested ridge above the town. Give it two days rather than one, book Pena’s timed entry before you travel, and take the train from Rossio in Lisbon instead of driving into the village.
Sintra is a hill of follies. Portuguese kings, an English merchant and a collector who made his fortune in Brazil each built a fantasy into the same wooded ridge, and UNESCO listed the whole landscape in 1995 rather than any single house. The ten entries below run in the order most visitors should take them: the two hilltop monuments first, the estates along the Monserrate road next, then the coast at Cabo da Roca and the beaches under the cliffs.
Ferdinand II turned a ruined monastery into a Romantic palace through the 1840s and 1850s, painted it red and yellow and wrapped it in Moorish arches, battlements and the Manueline cloister he kept from the original building. The park below is the better half, planted with trees the king collected from across the world and falling away to the Chalet of the Countess of Edla. Entry to the palace interior runs on timed slots, and the morning ones go first in high season.
Descend the Initiation Well at Quinta da Regaleira
Estate· Rua Barbosa du Bocage 5, Sintra
António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro hired the Italian set designer Luigi Manini to build this estate between 1904 and 1910 and filled it with Templar, Masonic and alchemical symbolism. The Initiation Well is what everyone comes for: a spiral of nine landings sunk into the rock, opening into a tunnel that surfaces beside a lake. Walk the grounds uphill first and take the well on the way back down, once the queue at the top has thinned.
Time2 hrs
CostTicketed
Best atOpening
TipEnter the well from the top and leave through the tunnel
The Moors ran this wall along the ridge in the eighth and ninth centuries, and Ferdinand II had it consolidated as a Romantic ruin in the nineteenth. The parapet walk is the reason to come: Pena on the next hilltop, the old town directly below, and on a clear day the Atlantic and Lisbon in one turn of the head. The steps are uneven granite, so wear real shoes.
Stand under the chimneys of the Sintra National Palace
Palace· Largo Rainha Dona Amélia, Sintra
Two conical kitchen chimneys mark the oldest surviving royal palace in Portugal, lived in more or less without a break from the early fifteenth century to the late nineteenth. Inside are the Magpie Room, the Swan Room and the Coats of Arms Room, along with one of the finest holdings of Mudéjar azulejos anywhere. It sits in the middle of the village, so it works as the first stop of the day or the last.
Time1–2 hrs
CostTicketed
Best atLate afternoon
TipThe chimneys are the kitchen, and you can stand beneath them
Francis Cook rebuilt the ruined house from 1858 to a design by James Knowles, and the result reads as Mughal, Moorish and Gothic at once, with a plaster ceiling that dissolves into lace above the central hall. The garden around it is arranged by geography, so a Mexican slope runs into a fern valley and on into a Japanese section, and it stays green when the rest of the coast has burned off. It is quieter than Pena, which is most of the appeal.
Time2 hrs
CostTicketed
Best atAny time
TipTake bus 435 rather than walking the Monserrate road
Franciscan friars founded this convent in 1560 and lined its cells with cork against the damp, which is how it earned the name Convento da Cortiça. The rooms are small enough to stoop into and the forest has been pressing on the granite ever since. It is the least grand monument in Sintra and the one people remember.
Time1 hr
CostTicketed
Best atWeekday mornings
TipThere is no tourist bus here, so plan a car or a taxi
Landmark· Estrada do Cabo da Roca, Colares, Sintra
The westernmost point of continental Europe is a cliff high above the Atlantic, with a lighthouse behind it and a stone marker carrying Camões’s line about where the land ends and the sea begins. There is no ticket, which is part of the pleasure. The wind is constant and the edge is unfenced in places, so keep back from it and bring a layer even in July.
Time1 hr
CostFree
Best atSunset
TipSunset draws a crowd, so arrive an hour before it
House and garden· Parque da Pena, Estrada da Pena, Sintra
Ferdinand II built this alpine chalet in the western corner of the Pena park with Elise Hensler, the opera singer he married and made Countess of Edla, and finished it in cork and painted wood. Fire gutted the building in 1999 and a long restoration returned it to visitors in 2011. Most people never walk this far into the park, which is exactly why the twenty minutes are worth spending.
Time1 hr
CostTicketed
Best atAfternoon
TipIt is downhill from Pena, so leave it until last
The narrow-gauge line opened in 1904 and still runs 11.5 km from Sintra through Colares to the beach at Praia das Maçãs, in wooden cars that rattle past market gardens and pine. Service is seasonal and concentrated on weekends and the summer months, and it is a journey rather than transport: slower than the bus and worth every minute of it.
TimeHalf day
CostTicketed
Best atSummer weekends
TipCheck the season’s timetable before planning a day around it
A seventeenth-century chapel and its abandoned house sit on a granite outcrop at the western end of the ridge, with the coast from Cascais to Cabo da Roca laid out below. The road up is narrow and the last stretch is walked. On a clear evening it is the best view in the Serra with the fewest people standing in it.
Time1–2 hrs
CostFree
Best atLate afternoon
TipCloud settles on this ridge, so check the sky before driving up
Two. The first buys Pena, the Moorish Castle and the National Palace with a queue somewhere in the middle of it; the second covers Quinta da Regaleira, Monserrate and either Cabo da Roca or the beaches. If you only have a day, pick two monuments and stop there.
Is Sintra a day trip from Lisbon or somewhere to stay?+
Both work. The train from Rossio makes the day trip easy, but the town changes once the last coach leaves: dinner in the old lanes and an early start at the palace gates are the argument for staying a night.
Do you need to book Pena Palace in advance?+
Yes. Entry to the palace interior runs on timed slots and the morning ones go first in high season. Book before you travel and treat the slot as fixed, because the gate admits you inside your window rather than whenever you arrive.
What is the best way to get around Sintra?+
Train in, then the 434 and 435 buses for the hill and the Monserrate road, and your own legs for the old town. Driving into the historic centre is a bad idea: the lanes are narrow and there is almost nowhere to leave a car.
When is the best time to visit Sintra?+
May, June and September. Mild weather, the beaches usable, and crowd pressure below the July and August peak. Sintra makes its own cloud in every month of the year, so carry a layer even in summer.
Where to eat
Best restaurants in Sintra
Five dining rooms in and around the village, from petiscos on the steps to fish on the cliff.
Chef Luís Santos opened this room near the station in 2014, and it is still the most ambitious cooking in the village: Portuguese classics rebuilt with a Mediterranean accent, at prices below what the setting suggests.
A petiscos house open since 2016 on the stepped lane above the old town. Small plates, cheese and charcuterie, and tables out on the steps when the weather holds.
The dining room sits on the cliff above the village tidal pool, and the menu is fish and shellfish landed on this coast. Take the long way back along the Colares road.
Baking on Rua das Padarias since 1862. The queijada recipe is older than the shop and the travesseiro was created here in the 1940s, which is why the queue folds around the corner by mid-morning.
The family traces its queijadas to 1756, which makes this the oldest name in Sintra baking. The shop on Volta do Duche sells them by the pack to carry up the hill.
A café in the old Queijadas da Mathilde factory, which supplied Ferdinand II. Restored with its original fittings, and the easiest place in Sintra to sit down with a coffee rather than eat standing up.
One road drops through the fields at Almoçageme to a cove closed in by cliffs and sea stacks, with a single restaurant above the sand. Blue Flag for 2026, and a shore break that suits strong swimmers.
Reached only on foot, down a steep path from the cliff road near Cabo da Roca, with sea stacks offshore and no facilities of any kind. Genuinely exposed: skip it in a swell.
A free path through the Sassetti estate links the historic centre with the Moorish Castle, 1,850 m of it, and carries on to Pena at 2,250 m. The house is a Lombard fantasy of 1885 and its garden opens with the path.
The high point of the Serra at 529 m, on a granite outcrop inside the Pena park about half an hour on foot from the palace. Pena from above, and the coast when the cloud lifts.
A circular coast route of about 9.5 km north from the cape, moderate going, passing above the Ursa stacks. Allow around three hours and start early in summer.
The former Casino da Vila, built in 1924 and reopened as the town’s art museum in 2014. Painting, sculpture and photography from the municipal contemporary collection, plus a gallery of temporary shows.
Miguel and Fernanda Barbosa spent fifty years assembling more than 10,000 fossils, minerals and meteorites, and the collection now fills a nineteenth-century house on Rua do Paço.
A watermill on the Rio do Porto, converted in 1976 to hold the sculpture of Artur and Pedro Anjos Teixeira, father and son, whose work the family gave to the town.
The old town itself: three lanes of pastry shops, tile shops and the National Palace, best walked in the hour before the first coaches arrive or after the last one leaves.
The village uphill from the centre, built around Praça D. Fernando II, where the twelfth-century fair still sets up twice a month and the medieval fair takes over in July.
The wine village between the Serra and the sea. Its demarcated region dates from 1908, the smallest still-wine region in Portugal, and the regional cooperative has been in business since 1931.
White houses stacked down a cliff to a saltwater pool cut into the rock. Swimming depends on the tide and the sea state, and the view works whatever the water is doing.
A former fishing town turned seaside resort about 15 km south, with its own train line back to Lisbon, so Sintra and Cascais make a clean loop in one day.
The eighteenth-century summer palace of the Portuguese court, all pink stucco and formal parterres, about twenty minutes back down the Sintra train line.
Costumed parades and street parties across the municipality. The dates move with Easter, so check before booking around them.
Jun
Festival de Sintra
The town’s classical festival, staged inside the palaces and manor houses: orchestral concerts, recitals, chamber music and dance. Each year’s programme and dates are published by the festival.
Jun
Festas de São Pedro
The patron saint’s festival at Largo D. Fernando II, running for a week and a half of music, dancing and processions to Saint Peter’s day on 29 June.
2nd & 4th Sun
Feira de São Pedro
A fair with twelfth-century origins, held twice a month at São Pedro de Sintra: pottery, basketwork, antiques, regional produce, smoked meats and cheese.
Jul
Feira Medieval de Sintra
Praça D. Fernando II turns over to a medieval recreation for four days, with more than a hundred participants, period crafts and market stalls.
Jun–Sep
Tram season on the Costa da Lua
The Elétrico de Sintra runs its main season through the summer, which is also when the beach concessions and lifeguards are in place.
Sep
Colares harvest
The Ramisco vines grown in sand behind the dunes are picked in September. The regional cooperative, founded in 1931, is the place to taste what came of it.
Dec
Christmas in Sintra
The municipal Christmas programme fills the historic centre and Estefânia. Daylight is short and the monuments are at their quietest all year.
Getting around
Sintra transport & airports
How to arrive from Lisbon, and how to climb a hill with no parking on it.
LIS
Lisbon Airport
Humberto Delgado Airport sits on the far side of Lisbon, so there is no direct run to Sintra. Take the metro or a taxi into the city and pick up the Sintra line from there.
The Linha de Sintra runs from Rossio station in central Lisbon to the terminus at Estefânia, a ten-minute walk below the historic centre. Some services also start at Oriente.
Scotturb still runs both hill circuits. The 434 loops station, historic centre, Moorish Castle and Pena; the 435 covers Quinta da Regaleira, Seteais and Monserrate.
The seasonal Elétrico de Sintra runs down to Praia das Maçãs. In town the answer is your legs: the Vila Sassetti path climbs from the centre to the castle and on to Pena, and cars have nowhere to park up there.
The pastries, the fish and the wine to order before you leave.
Travesseiro de Sintra
Puff pastry folded around almond and egg-yolk cream and dusted with sugar, created at Casa Piriquita in the 1940s and eaten warm.
Queijada de Sintra
A small tart of fresh cheese, sugar, eggs and cinnamon in a thin crust. The recipe predates every shop that sells it.
Fofos de Belas
A light sponge cake from Belas, in the east of the municipality, sold in the same pastry shops as the queijadas.
Nozes de Galamares
A walnut sweet named for the hamlet on the road down to Colares, and one of the traditional Sintra pastries worth asking for by name.
Pastéis da Pena
The third of Sintra’s traditional pastries, named for the palace on the hill above the shops that make it.
Percebes
Gooseneck barnacles prised off the rocks on this coast at low tide, boiled in salted water and eaten with your fingers.
Peixe grelhado
Whatever came in that morning, grilled whole over coals with olive oil and salt. Order it at Azenhas do Mar or Praia das Maçãs rather than in the village.
Vinho de Colares
Ramisco reds and Malvasia whites from vines grown in sand behind the dunes, demarcated since 1908 and made in small quantities.
Sintra fact sheet
Sintra at a glance
The essentials worth knowing before you go.
Country
Portugal
Region
Lisbon District · Grande Lisboa
Population
29,896 town parishes · 385,654 municipality (2021)
Founded
Hilltop castle built by the Moors, 8th to 9th century
Nickname
Serra da Lua, the moon range
Language
Portuguese
Currency
Euro (€)
Time zone
WET · UTC+0
Calling code
+351 21
Airports
LIS · Lisbon Humberto Delgado
Power
230V · Type C/F
Emergency
112
Interesting facts
Sintra’s cultural landscape was inscribed by UNESCO in 1995, the first cultural landscape listed in Europe.
The Serra de Sintra tops out at 529 m at Cruz Alta, a granite outcrop inside the Pena park.
Cabo da Roca, in Colares parish, is the westernmost point of continental Europe.
Casa Piriquita has baked on Rua das Padarias since 1862, and the queijada recipe it sells is older than the shop itself.
The Colares wine region has been demarcated since 1908 and is the smallest still-wine region in Portugal, with vines rooted in sand.
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