The Pena National Palace, Sintra, Portugal
Pena National Palace
The Pena National Palace is a Romanticist palace in Sao
Pedro de Penaferrim, municipality of Sintra, Portugal. The palace stands on the
top of a hill above the town of Sintra, and on a clear day it can be easily
seen from Lisbon and much of its metropolitan area. It is a national monument
and constitutes one of the major expressions of 19th-century Romanticism in the
world.
The palace's history started in the Middle Ages when a
chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Pena was built on the top of the hill above
Sintra. According to tradition, construction occurred after an apparition of
the Virgin Mary.
In 1493, King John II, accompanied by his wife Queen Leonor,
made a pilgrimage to the site to fulfill a vow. His successor, King Manuel I,
was also very fond of this sanctuary, and ordered the construction of a
monastery on this site which was donated to the Order of Saint Jerome. For
centuries Pena was a small, quiet place for meditation, housing a maximum of
eighteen monks. Sources
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