Cbd3a929eea828262e7d7913f0e0f0f6

Sintra Travel Guide powered by advice from Real Travelers

 Get Real Deal alerts »

Sintra Travel Guide

Default_icon

Introduction

by Frommers Travel Guides
wiley
Content provided by Frommers

    29km (18 miles) NW of Lisbon

    Writers have sung Sintra's praises ever since Portugal's national poet, Luís Vaz de Camões, proclaimed its glory in Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads). Lord Byron called it "glorious Eden" when he and John Cam Hobhouse included Sintra in their 1809 grand tour. English romantics thrilled to its description in Byron's autobiographical Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

    Picture a town on a hillside, with decaying birthday-cake villas covered with tiles coming loose in the damp mist. Luxuriant vegetation covers the town: camellias for melancholic romantics, ferns behind which lizards dart, pink and purple bougainvillea over garden trelliswork, red geraniums on wrought-iron balconies, eucalyptus branches fluttering in the wind, lemon groves, and honey-sweet mimosa scenting the air. But take heed -- some who visit Sintra fall under its spell and stay forever.

    Sintra is one of the oldest towns in the country. When the crusaders captured it in 1147, they fought bitterly against the Moors firmly entrenched in their hilltop castle, the ruins of which remain today.

Sintra Travel Experiences

Traveler Photos of Sintra

Cbd3a929eea828262e7d7913f0e0f0f6 783b736feda2d046c91676660c738a6b B6698620dad8b3b5dc4cb9cec978e7da the lake at the end of the labyrinth
 See all photos in Sintra »

Hotels near Sintra