Palace built between 1842 and 1854 on top of the Sintra hills, near
Lisbon, for Ferdinand II of Portugal (Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg), with
Baron Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege as architect. On a ruined monastery
they assembled a mix of Gothic Revival, Manueline Revival and Moorish
Revival, with a terrace looking out to the Atlantic.
It is the best-known Romantic palace in the Iberian Peninsula and
Neuschwanstein’s Portuguese cousin, with a head start of almost thirty
years: both were dreamed up by kings who preferred an invented Middle
Ages to the real one.
