Why go
Pena Palace is more revealing when you recognize the older monastery inside it, while Monserrate tells a separate story of private patrons and changing designs. Seteais, Pena and Monserrate show how architecture and wooded terrain were conceived together, rather than as buildings placed on neutral ground.
The full story
Travelers and aristocrats increasingly valued Sintra's cooler, wooded landscape in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. William Beckford stayed at Seteais in 1787 and later rented Gerard Devisme's Monserrate estate. Francis Cook subsequently developed Monserrate's orientalizing palace and grounds. Ferdinand II's larger intervention came at Pena: after buying the former monastery and neighboring land, he and the Baron of Eschwege developed a highly varied palace while retaining parts of the sixteenth-century religious building, including the church and cloister. Pena then took over much of the town palace's role as a royal summer residence. Sintra also drew artists and writers, among them Eça de Queirós and the painter João Cristino da Silva. The period left a landscape of distinct projects rather than one uniform style. Compare Pena's layered royal complex with Monserrate's estate to see how different patrons interpreted the same mountain setting.