Palácio Nacional de Sintra

The medieval royal palace of Sintra, with its great chimneys and painted halls.

The National Palace of Sintra and its two chimneys

The Palácio Nacional de Sintra stands in the centre of the old town, its two great conical chimneys rising over the houses like the emblem of the village. A royal palace for more than six centuries, it is one of the best-preserved medieval palaces of Portugal, where the rooms lived in by kings and queens still keep their tiles, their frescoes and their stories.

The palace

The palace grew from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, as the kings of Portugal added to the rooms around the first medieval halls. Its great halls — the Sala dos Cisnes, with its swans, and the Sala das Pegas, with its magpies — are among the masterpieces of the palace, and the coat-of-arms hall of King Manuel I, with its vault of deer, impresses with its scale. The kitchen, under the huge chimneys, served the court feast days of the palace until the nineteenth century.

What to see

The two great conical chimneys, over the old town.
The painted halls — Sala dos Cisnes, Sala das Pegas and the coat-of-arms hall.
The chapel and the rooms with their azulejo tiles.
The views over Sintra from the windows of the palace.

Visiting

The palace is in the centre of Sintra, a short walk from the train station, and its visits are organised by Parques de Sintra; times, tickets and combined programmes with the other monuments of the mountain are published by the official source. The palace is one of the great stops of a day in Sintra, with the Pena and the Regaleira nearby.