10 Best Things to Do in Sintra

Quinta da Regaleira is the estate that Brazilian millionaire Antonio Augusto Carvalho Monteiro built between 1904 and 1910 with Italian architect Luigi Manini. The house itself is handsome enough. The gardens are the real draw: four hectares of grottoes, artificial lakes, stone towers and carved symbols tied to Freemasonry, the Knights Templar and alchemy.

The Initiation Well is the centrepiece - a 27-metre inverted tower with nine spiralling levels of stone steps dropping into a tunnel network that emerges beside a waterfall. Entry costs about 15 EUR and the site needs two hours to explore properly. Wear shoes with grip. The tunnel floors stay wet year-round and the worn granite gets genuinely slippery.

Pro Tip: Enter the Initiation Well from the lower tunnel rather than the top. The queue at the upper entrance regularly runs 20 minutes while the bottom approach is often empty, and climbing upward into the light makes for better photographs.

The Moorish Castle (Castelo dos Mouros) predates everything else on this list. Muslim builders raised it in the 8th and 9th centuries as a lookout over the Atlantic approach to Lisbon, and Afonso Henriques took it in 1147. What survives is a serrated line of granite wall running along two rocky peaks, consolidated in the 1840s by the same King Ferdinand II who built Pena Palace.

Walking the full rampart circuit takes about 45 minutes and involves several hundred uneven steps beside low parapets. The payoff is a 360-degree view across the Sintra hills, the Atlantic coastline and, on clear days, Lisbon itself. Admission is roughly 12 EUR. There is almost no shade anywhere on the walls, so summer afternoons here are punishing.

Pro Tip: Walk down from Pena Palace to the Moorish Castle instead of waiting for the 434 bus between them. The signposted forest path takes about 15 minutes downhill, saves a fare, and drops you at the castle's lower gate.

Sintra National Palace (Palacio Nacional de Sintra) is the one you can reach without a bus. Its two white conical kitchen chimneys, 33 metres tall, have defined the town skyline since the 15th century. This is the best-preserved medieval royal palace in Portugal, occupied more or less continuously by the monarchy from the early 1400s until 1910.

The tiled rooms carry the story. The Sala das Pegas has 136 magpies painted across its ceiling, reportedly King Joao I's answer to court gossip, while the Sala dos Brasoes displays 72 noble coats of arms beneath a gilded dome. Admission costs around 13 EUR and 75 minutes covers it. It is also the least crowded of Sintra's major palaces.

Pro Tip: Come between 13:00 and 15:00, when the coach groups are up at Pena Palace. Buy the ticket at the door rather than online - this palace rarely sells out and the counter queue on Largo Rainha Dona Amelia moves quickly.

Monserrate Palace repays the extra bus ride. Sir Francis Cook, an English textile merchant, rebuilt it in 1858 to a design by James Knowles that borrows Mughal domes, Moorish arcades and Gothic tracery, then had the interior stonework carved into something closer to lace than masonry. Lord Byron stayed on the estate in 1809 and wrote about it in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

The 33-hectare park matters as much as the house. Cook's gardeners arranged it into geographic zones - a Mexican garden of agaves, a Japanese section, a fern valley fed by an artificial waterfall - holding more than 3,000 plant species. Entry runs about 12 EUR. Because most day-trippers never get this far west, you can walk the lawns in near silence even in August.

Pro Tip: Take the 435 bus out to Monserrate first thing, then walk the 4 km back downhill to town along Estrada de Monserrate. The road is quiet, shaded most of the way, and passes the Seteais viewpoint.

Most visitors photograph Pena Palace and leave, which means the 200-hectare park below it stays quiet all day. Ferdinand II planted it from the 1840s with species shipped in from across the Portuguese empire: North American sequoias, Chinese ginkgos, Australian tree ferns, Himalayan rhododendrons. Gravel paths thread between them past ponds, stone follies and shaded benches.

Cruz Alta, at 528 metres, is the highest point in the Serra de Sintra and a 30-minute uphill walk from the palace. On a clear morning the view stretches from Cascais to the Tagus estuary. The Chalet da Condessa d'Edla, the Swiss-style cottage Ferdinand built for his second wife, sits at the western edge and needs its own ticket. Park-only admission is around 10 EUR.

Pro Tip: Your Pena Palace ticket already includes Parque da Pena, so do not pay twice. Head straight for Cruz Alta after the palace visit; ten minutes of walking leaves almost every other visitor behind.

Cabo da Roca is where the European mainland runs out. Cliffs drop 140 metres straight into the Atlantic, a red-topped lighthouse has worked the headland since 1772, and a stone monument carries Camoes' line about the land ending and the sea beginning. There is a visitor centre, a small cafe and a car park. That is the whole of it.

Come for the weather rather than the facilities. Wind on this headland regularly hits 50 km/h even in July, and afternoon fog can erase the view within minutes. The clifftop path heading north towards Praia da Ursa gives better angles than the monument itself. Access costs nothing, and the 403 bus fare from Sintra is roughly 4.50 EUR each way.

Pro Tip: Check a coastal webcam before boarding the 403 - the cape is fogged in on a large share of summer afternoons. Roughly an hour before sunset gives the clearest air and the emptiest cliff path.

Two beaches sit within a few kilometres of each other on the Colares coast, and they serve different purposes. Praia da Adraga is the smaller and more dramatic - a curve of sand hemmed in by black rock stacks and a natural arch, with one long-standing seafood restaurant at the top of the access road. Praia Grande is exactly what the name says: a 1.1 km sweep favoured by surfers, backed by Europe's largest saltwater swimming pool.

The Atlantic here is cold, typically 16 to 18 degrees Celsius in summer, and the rip currents are real. Lifeguards patrol both beaches from June through September. Praia Grande has the easier parking and the fuller row of cafes. Praia da Adraga has the better rock pools at low tide. Neither charges entry, though sunbed hire runs about 15 EUR a day.

Pro Tip: Reach Praia da Adraga on a weekday before 11:00 - the access road holds fewer than 60 cars and fills fast. At Praia Grande, the fossil dinosaur footprints on the northern cliff face are visible at low tide.

Convento dos Capuchos is the oddest place in the Serra de Sintra and the least visited on this list. Franciscan friars founded it in 1560 and lined the cells, doorframes and corridors with cork slabs for insulation, which is why locals still call it the Cork Convent. Eight friars lived here at a time, in rooms barely long enough to lie down in.

Getting there is the obstacle. No regular bus route reaches it, so plan on a taxi at around 20 EUR each way from Sintra, or a long walk through the forest. Admission is roughly 8 EUR. What you get in return is real solitude: moss on granite, doorways under 1.5 metres high, and no sound but wind in the trees. Give it 45 minutes.

Pro Tip: Pair Convento dos Capuchos with the Peninha viewpoint two kilometres further on and use one taxi for both. Ask the driver to wait - the fare for waiting time beats arranging a second pickup from a spot with patchy phone signal.

The town itself deserves more than the twenty minutes most day-trippers give it. Sintra Vila is a compact grid of cobbled lanes below the National Palace, and it is where the two pastries worth crossing the country for are made. Travesseiros are long puff-pastry pillows filled with almond and egg cream, dusted in sugar, served warm. Queijadas are small crisp-shelled tarts of fresh cheese, cinnamon and sugar, documented in Sintra since the 13th century.

Rua das Padarias is the street to walk. Piriquita has baked travesseiros there since 1862 and sells them for about 1.60 EUR each; the queue moves faster than it looks. Beyond the pastry, the lanes hold tile workshops, the Museu Anjos Teixeira in a converted watermill, and the small Igreja de Sao Martinho. Late afternoon, once the coaches have gone, the centre empties out.

Pro Tip: Buy travesseiros at 08:30 before heading up the hill. The first batch comes out of the oven warm and there is no queue. Eat them on the 434 bus rather than lining up again at 16:00 with everyone else.