Pena Palace

In the hills of Sintra, about 40 minutes from Lisbon, stands the palace that turned Romanticism into architecture. Built between 1842 and 1854 by King Ferdinand II on the ruins of a monastery destroyed in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, it was one of Europe's first Romantic palaces, and it made Sintra a pilgrimage site for the movement. It is a deliberate fantasy of clashing Moorish, Gothic, and Renaissance styles, in red and yellow towers erupting from a forested peak. The palace outlived the world that built it. In 1910 Queen Amélia spent her last night in Portugal there, before the monarchy fell. In June classical concerts play in its halls as part of the Sintra festival; in December the whole palace is illuminated for Christmas.