Pena Palace
Sintra · 2 July 2024
Built in the 1840s for a king who wanted a folly rather than a fortress, and it shows: Moorish domes, Manueline windows, a Gothic clock tower and Wagnerian battlements all sharing one building with no attempt made to reconcile them.
Tile, not paint, is what gives the walls that blue. Ferdinand II was a German prince married into the Portuguese throne, and he built it on the site of a ruined monastery he bought for almost nothing after the religious orders were dissolved.
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