At Pena Palace, on Cascais Bay, the Portuguese Riviera

 “My affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.”

– William Shakespeare
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(on Cascais Bay, the Portuguese Riviera) Some 25 km (~16 mil.) west of Lisbon, the country's capital, the Portuguese Riviera is the affluent coastal region, centered on the towns of Cascais, Oeiras, and Sintra. Sometimes called the Costa do Sol, it is coterminous with the Estoril Coast. In the western part of the Iberian Peninsula, Portugal faces the Atlantic on one side and shares a border with Spain on the other. Portugal’s monarchy began in 1143. Its first King was D. Afonso Henriques who conquered the land from the Moors. For a short period Philip II of Spain ruled the country (from 1580 until 1640), when it reverted to the Portuguese monarchy again. The last King, Manuel II, left and went into exile and in 1910 Portugal became a Republic. The Estoril Coast is a half hour’s drive from Lisbon; during the monarchy this area was the summer residence for the royals who spent their vacation in palaces built in neighboring Sintra (featured here).

+ Long the home of Portugal’s monarchs, Sintra (featured here) is a town of great historic mansions, set against the backdrop of lush hills. Sintra’s many castles include the Palácio Nacional de Sintra (a main abode of Portuguese royalty until the early 20th century), the hilltop and storybook Palácio da Pena (depicted here), Quinta de Regaleira (incorporating several architectural styles and gorgeous surrounding gardens), the Castelo dos Mouros (Moorish Castle), and the Palácio de Monserrate. With its rippling mountains, dewy forests thick with ferns and lichen, exotic gardens and glittering palaces, Sintra is like a page torn from a fairytale. Sintra-Vila, its UNESCO World Heritage–listed center, is dotted with pastel-colored manors folded into luxuriant hills that roll down to the Atlantic. Celts worshipped their moon god here, the Moors built a precipitous castle, and 18th-century Portuguese royals swanned around its dreamy gardens. Even Lord Byron waxed lyrical about Sintra’s charms: "Lo! Cintra’s glorious Eden intervenes, in variegated maze of mount and glen," which inspired his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. It is the must-do side trip from Lisbon, which many do in a day, but if time’s not an issue, there's more than enough allure here to warrant lingering a little longer than that.

+ The Palácio da Pena (Pena Palace), rising from a thickly wooded peak and often enshrouded in swirling mist, is a bizarre confection of onion domes, Moorish keyhole gates, writhing stone snakes, and crenellated towers in pinks and lemons. It is considered the greatest expression of 19th-century romanticism in Portugal. Ferdinand of Saxe Coburg-Gotha, the artist-husband of Queen Maria II, and later Dom Ferdinand II, commissioned Prussian architect Ludwig von Eschwege to design it in 1840. (Inspired by the Stolzenfels and Rheinstein castles and Potsdam's Babelsberg Palace, a flourish of colorful imagination was launched!)