Cultural Landscape of Sintra

Romanticism found its first architectural home in Sintra. In the 19th century, Ferdinand II transformed a ruined monastery into the fantastical Pena Palace, mixing Gothic, Moorish, Egyptian and Renaissance motifs and planting a park of native and exotic trees; villas in the same spirit soon dotted the wooded serra. This union of architecture and landscape shaped garden design across Europe, and UNESCO inscribed the cultural landscape in 1995.