Wander & Wonder Travel Newsletter

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Around three million people a year go to Sintra in Portugal.

Almost all of them arrive from Lisbon on the morning train, photograph a yellow palace, and are back in the city before dinner.

Which is a shame, because this green hill above the Atlantic is one of the strangest places in Europe - a forest where Portugal’s kings and its richest men spent a century building fantasy palaces, each one trying to out-dream the last.

And October is the month to come.

The August heat is gone, the queues shrink, and the hill does the thing it is famous for: it fills with mysterious mist.

You simply mustn’t miss it.

Read on to learn about:

🕳️ The tower that was built downwards

🎭 The opera designer who built a millionaire’s secret

🪵 The monastery lined with cork

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Destination of the Week

Sintra is not really a town.

It is a mountain.

The Serra de Sintra rises out of flat country just short of the Atlantic, and it makes its own weather: sea fog rolls in, and it stays cooler and greener than Lisbon.

Portuguese kings noticed it in the 1200s and came up to escape the summer.

Over the centuries they covered one hillside with palaces and private estates - Pena Palace on the summit, a Moorish castle along the ridge below.

Then they rebuilt the forest.

A German prince planted 85 hectares with trees from every continent, and Monserrate’s gardens hold over 3,000 species.

Don't Miss

A ten-minute walk down into town, inside the gardens of Quinta da Regaleira, there is a hole in the ground.

It looks like a well. It is not.

No water has ever been in it.

It is a tower - built downwards.

The Initiation Well drops 27 metres into the rock, and a spiral staircase of 139 steps winds down the inside past nine stone landings.

Nine, because they stand for the nine circles in Dante’s Inferno.

At the bottom, set into the floor, there is a compass and a cross.

And the only way out is through a tunnel.

Did You Know?

The gardens around the well were the work of one man, known as Monteiro the Millionaire.

He made his fortune in coffee and gemstones, and he spent it on the Knights Templar and the Freemasons.

He hired a set designer from the La Scala opera house in Milan.

And the two of them spent ten years turning a hillside into a puzzle: two wells, unlit tunnels running between them, grottoes, false doors, and symbols carved into almost every stone.

Then Monteiro died, and he never explained what any of it meant.

A whole garden written in code - and nobody has the key.

The Trendy Traveler Tip

It’s not just the hills that hide secrets - if you drive just fifteen minutes into the forest outside Sintra, you’ll find plenty of lesser-known sights.

Take for instance Convento dos Capuchos; it was built in 1560 for eight monks - and never held more than eight monks at a time.

The cells are tiny. The ceilings are so low that you have to bow your head to get through the doors (which was the point).

And the whole thing - walls, doors, ceilings - is lined with cork, stripped off the trees outside.

They lived like that for 274 years.

Today, it is the perfect place to enjoy a picnic in the lush green woods.