Visit the Palacio da Pena - San Pedro de Penaferrim (Sintra)

The Pena National Palace, located in the historic town of Sintra, Parish of San Pedro de Penaferrim (Sintra), represents one of the best architectural expressions of Romanticism in nineteenth-century world. On July 7, 2007 he was elected as one of the seven wonders of Portugal, and indeed the first European romantic palace, built about 30 years before the charismatic Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria.
Almost all the Palace is built on huge rocks, and boasts a mix of styles (Gothic, neomanuelino, neo-Islamic, neo-Renaissance art with other suggestions such as India).

Structurally, the Pena Palace is divided into four main areas:

The harness and encircling walls (which served to consolidate the implementation of construction), with two doors, one of which is provided with a drawbridge;

The body, fully restored, the old convent, slightly angled at the top of the hill, thoroughly embattled and the Clock Tower;

The Courtyard of the Arches front of the chapel, with its wall of Moorish arches;

The palace area itself with its round bastion of large, with an interior decorated in the style cathédrale, according to precepts in vogue and motivating key interventions at the level of decorative furniture and decoration in general.

The bow of the body, flanked by two towers, has a colorful decoration in relief to imitate coral. On it, a window, bow window, received at the base, also in relief, a figure of a hybrid, half-fish, half-man, leaving a shell with the head covered by hair that transforms into a trunk vine whose branches are supported by the enigmatic character. This set, known as the porch of Triton, was programmed by D. Fernando, who designed it as a 'gantry Allegoria of the creation of the world ", and seems to condense in symbolic terms the theory of" four elements ".

The building is very irregular and is conditioned by a preexisting building there - the Chapel of Nossa Senhora da Pena - and by topography. The result is a roughly rectangular core, organized around a cloister and other elongated.
The facades are divided by bocéis or twisted and fenestrated, more or less regularly, and spans square, rectangular and round arch. The towers and ramparts have rings on top dog or arcatura forming sentry paths, gazebos and terraces. Since the square towers are circular turrets at the corners with conical roofs.
The main facade is lined with polychrome tile pattern and has a balcony at the third floor. At the core square, stand out several broken arches on side walls. A staircase leads to the cloister U, two-storey arcade with full arches in the first and the second shot. Around these have to be some of the main rooms.
On the north side is the chapel, lined with tile pattern with the spacecraft separated from the chancel by web in lignum vitae.
The design of the interiors of the Palace to adapt to the summer residence of the royal family appreciated the excellent stucco work, murals and trompe-l'oeil several coats of tile nineteenth century, integrating the many royal collections in environments where the taste for for collecting and trinket shops are quite clear.