In the town of Sintra, western Portugal

 Located on the top of the Sintra mountains, a few kilometers from Lisbon, the Pena Palace is like the Crown Jewel, awakening feelings of mystery, discovery, and charm:

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(in western Portuga) The town of Sintra constitutes three parishes of Lisbon (Santa Maria e São Miguel, São Martinho, and São Pedro de Pennaferrim) and is within the much larger Sintra municipality, on the Portuguese Riviera. Sintra is situated on the northern slope of the rugged Sintra Mountains. An area of former royal summer residence, Sintra possesses a beauty that was celebrated by Lord Byron in his poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and English author Robert Southey referred to Sintra as “the most blessed spot on the whole inhabitable globe.” (Sintra was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995.)

+ Rising from a thickly wooded peak and often enshrouded in swirling mist, Palácio Nacional da Pena is a 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. A 19th-century castle, partly an adaptation of a 16th-century monastery and partly an imitation of a medieval fortress, was built for Queen Maria II by her young German consort, Ferdinand II. The castle stands on the top of a hill in the Sintra Mountains above the town of Sintra, and on a clear day it can be easily seen from Lisbon and much of its metropolitan area.

+ Ferdinand of Saxe Coburg-Gotha, the artist-husband of Queen Maria II, and later Dom Ferdinand II, commissioned Prussian architect Ludwig von Eschwege in 1840 to build the Mouresque-Manueline epic (and as a final flourish added an armored statue representing a medieval knight overlooking the palace from a nearby peak). Inspired by Stolzenfels and Rheinstein castles and Potsdam's Babelsberg Palace, a flourish of imagination and color commenced.

On the extensive grounds of the castle, Ferdinand created the Parque da Pena, a series of gardens and walking paths that incorporated more than 2,000 species of domestic and nonnative plants. Loosely adopting the conventions established by the English garden movement in the 18th century, the park incorporates natural elements throughout, adapting to the area’s rugged terrain rather than reshaping it. On another peak is Castle dos Mouros, which was built by the Moors in the 8th and 9th centuries. The 15th-century royal palace, a mixture of Moorish and debased Gothic architecture, is in the Old Town section of Sintra. The palace served as a refuge for the royal family during the summer months, when Lisbon could become uncomfortably hot, and during times of plague. Although damaged in the earthquake of 1755, the palace was painstakingly restored, and in the 21st century more than 400,000 tourists visited it each year. (These buildings and the nearby Monserrate Palace and its park are among the best examples of landscape gardening on the Iberian Peninsula.)