The National Palace of Sintra: the Town Palace Under the Twin Chimneys

How the National Palace of Sintra differs from Pena

Two conical chimneys rise over the royal kitchen and mark the building from anywhere in the town centre. Parques de Sintra calls it the only palace that spans the entire history of Portugal: the first building on the site probably dates from the 10th or 11th century under Moorish rule, and by the end of the Middle Ages it was the hub of a large territory managed for the Queens of Portugal. Kings came here for the hunting and the cooler summer air, and the court took refuge here during plague outbreaks in the capital.

Pena works on a different scale. It is a 19th-century creation on a hilltop, bought as a ruined monastery by Ferdinand II in 1838 and rebuilt from 1843 under Baron Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, a mineralogist and mining engineer rather than an architect, inside 85 hectares of park. Getting from Pena's main entrance to the start of the palace route takes about 30 minutes on the official reckoning, and the interior runs on fixed timed slots with no early entry and no grace period.

The town palace asks none of that. It stands at street level in the middle of Sintra, minutes from where the trains and buses stop, so you can slot it in before or after the hill without adding travel time to the day.

The tiled rooms, the Swan ceiling and the Magpie Room

The route runs through a long sequence of named rooms, and the ceilings are what most people remember. The painted panel ceiling of the Swan Room is believed to date from the 14th century, when Sintra formed part of the Queens' Lands administered by Philippa of Lancaster, whose brother Henry IV of England used a crowned swan as an emblem. The Magpie Room sits on the same official route.

The Room of the Coats of Arms is the other room people stop in: 72 coats of arms of leading noble households, the arms of Manuel I at the centre of the cupola, and walls tiled with 18th-century scenes of gallantry below. The kitchen you walk through later is the one those two chimneys belong to.

• Swan Room, with the painted panel ceiling believed to date from the 14th century
• Magpie Room
• Room of the Coats of Arms, 72 coats of arms and 18th-century tiled scenes of gallantry
• Golden Chamber and Galley Room
• Chambers of King João III and Chamber of Afonso VI
• Queens' Room, Chapel and Council Chamber
• Kitchen, under the two conical chimneys
• Manueline Room

Getting there from the station and from the hill buses

The official access page puts the palace a 10 to 15 minute walk from Sintra railway station, and also lists Scotturb buses 434 and 435 as serving it. That is what makes this monument easy for a day visitor: you step off the train, walk into the town, and you are at the door.

Bus 434 is the same line that takes you up the hill. Boarding it in town puts you on a circuit that begins at 08:50 and comes round about every 10 minutes, running from the station and the Lourel car park via Biester Palace, Lagos and São Pedro de Sintra to the Moorish Castle and Pena, with the last one back down from the Pena stop at around 19:00. Arriving is just as plain: the CP suburban Sintra Line brings you in from Oriente, Rossio or Entrecampos, about 40 minutes of travel from Rossio and 47 from Oriente, before that short walk into the centre.

Drivers should read this carefully. Private vehicles cannot reach Pena at all, the Rampa da Pena is closed to private cars, and access to Sintra's historic centre is restricted to residents, so Parques de Sintra points drivers to the peripheral car parks. The July 2026 traffic measures send tour coaches to the Lourel car park, where passengers switch to buses 434 and 435, while taxis and ride-hailing cars keep access to a designated pick-up spot at Pena. The how-to-get-there page on this site sets out the trains, the roads and the three marked walking trails in full.

How long the town palace visit takes and where it fits in your day

Hours first: the palace is open 09:30 to 18:30, the last admission to the palace is 17:30 and the last garden admission is 18:00. The closed days are the same four the whole Parques de Sintra calendar observes, 24 and 25 December, 31 December and 1 January. No official visit duration is published for this palace, so treat it as a compact indoor circuit of connected rooms, with none of the walking time Pena builds into its day.

The order that works depends on your Pena slot. With the first interior slot of the day on the hill, around 09:30, go up first and come back down to the town palace afterwards, with the 17:30 last admission as your deadline. With a late Pena slot, do the town palace in the morning instead, because Pena's last interior admission is 18:00 and the route closes at 18:30, which leaves nothing afterwards.

Do not hang a third timed monument off the same day. Pena's ticket is dead if you arrive after the printed time, it sits at the end of that 30-minute climb from the main entrance, and the park and palace counted about 1.9 million visitors in 2025, so the queues build exactly where you cannot afford them. For a running order that starts on the hill and finishes in the town, see the one-day itinerary page here.

Stairs, levels and visitors with mobility limits

The published accessibility statement on the official pages used here covers Pena, and it is blunt: the palace interior there is not accessible to visitors with reduced mobility because the visitor route has stairways throughout. Up on the hill, wheelchairs board the transfer bus from the main entrance by a rear lifting platform, and even then the final approach from the transfer stop runs about 90 metres with gradients touching 18%. Disabled parking at Pena amounts to a single space.

No equivalent statement is published for the town palace, and this is a building whose wings went up across several centuries, so expect level changes between rooms. If stairs are the issue, ask on the door before you commit, and plan the rest of the day knowing the town centre is flat while the hill climbs steeply.

Dogs are the other thing people turn up with. Among these monuments only the Moorish Castle and the Park of Monserrate take them, and properly identified assistance dogs are admitted at the sites.

Tours from Lisbon that take in the town as well as the hill

If you would rather not assemble the train, the 434 and a timed Pena slot yourself, two departures listed here cover the day in different shapes. Each carries free cancellation up to 24 hours before departure, useful in a place where strong wind can shut the Park of Pena to circulation.

Sintra and Cascais Small-Group Day Trip from Lisbon takes 8 hours from €49 and holds 4.8 ★ (8054 reviews), with a local expert guide, an air-conditioned minivan and a meeting point in front of the Hard Rock Cafe. Pena Palace and Park tickets are included or optional depending on the option you choose, and Quinta da Regaleira tickets come only with the upgrade option; the operator warns that on the no-tickets option same-day palace tickets may be limited or unavailable, so pick the ticket option when you book.

Lisbon: Sintra Half-Day Guided Tour with Pena Palace Tickets is the short version: 5 hours from €80, rated 4.9 ★ (624 reviews), a vehicle capped at 8 passengers, an expert local guide the whole way, and the Pena Palace Essential Ticket for the palace interior and park entry already in the price. Take this one if you want the hill handled and the rest of the day left open.

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