The Palace of Pena is the highest of the main tourist attractions in Sintra, sitting at the top of a high and steep hill. Luckily there’s a tourist bus which runs between all the main attractions, or do what we did and take a taxi up to the Palace (it cost us 8 Euros and we walked down).
It’s set in a large area of interesting parkland with a wide range of natural trees and interesting arrangements of boulders, as well as landscaped areas with follies, lakes and out-buildings. We walked up to the highest point of the mountain which is marked by a cross and has incredible views over the surrounding plains.
The Palace itself is a brightly coloured building in a variety of styles which looks like something straight out of a fairy tale. The interiors are lavish but quite a few rooms were closed for restoration when we visited and to be honest we preferred the exterior anyway. Both the palace exterior and the parkland around it are absolutely stunning with amazing views, but be prepared for some steep walks if you want to explore on foot. There is also a farm on the site but we didn’t visit that.
It’s open every day of the year and when we visited the hours were 9:30 am to 7pm for the palace or 8pm for the house.
Much of the park is served by a hop on hop off bus which is accessible for wheelchair users, and there is also a bus which you have to pay for which runs to the palace although you’ll still need to negotiate a steep ramp to get any further. Once off the bus, however, only the shop and cafe areas are accessible for wheelchairs and the park includes a lot of steep slopes. Mobility equipment (manual wheelchairs and traction equipment) are available at the site if you pre-book, details on their website. There’s no discount for disabled visitors or their carers, there is a senior discount but you have to be over 65 to get it and it’s only 10%.
