In shortPena Park in Sintra covers 85 hectares of Romantic landscape around the palace, with its own admission and its own clock. You get the gates from 09:00 to 19:00, last admission 18:00, which is a spare half hour at each end of the palace interior's 09:30 to 18:30. Two entrances serve the park, the Main Entrance and the Lakes Entrance, and the paths climb from the Valley of the Lakes to the High Cross at 528 metres.
85 hectaresSize of Pena Park
528 mHigh Cross, highest point
09:00 to 19:00Park gates, last entry 18:00
2Park entrances
What Pena Park in Sintra covers
Eighty-five hectares of hillside wrap the palace, and Parques de Sintra calls it Portugal's most important arboretum. Ferdinand II bought the ruin and its land with his own funds in 1838, then spent decades planting the slopes with species from outside Portugal. Asian camellias came in the 1840s, and the park holds the Camellia Garden of Excellence title.
Seven places carry a name on the official park list, and those names are what you build a walking route around: the Valley of the Lakes, the Queen's Fernery, the Monk's Grotto, the Temple of Columns, Pena Farm, the Chalet of the Countess of Edla and the High Cross. They sit far apart rather than in one cluster, and the spacing is deliberate. You walk from one set piece to the next, with the ochre and old rose walls of the palace showing above the tree line as the path turns, then dropping out of sight behind the trees until the next bend.
The two entrances and how to reach them
Parques de Sintra lists two gates. The Main Entrance sits at 38º 47' 16.45" N, 9º 23' 15.35" W, on Estrada da Pena, and nearly everyone uses it, because the bus stops there and the paid transfer up to the palace starts there. The Lakes Entrance is at 38° 47' 21.4" N, 9° 23' 31.9" W, round the hill and closer to the western side of the park.
Private vehicles cannot reach the monument at all. The ban holds right to the gate: the Rampa da Pena, the final stretch of approach road, is permanently shut to private cars and carries public transport, and the official instruction is to leave the car in Sintra's historic centre or at a peripheral car park. Reaching the Main Entrance without one means Scotturb's 434, which begins at 08:50 and comes round about every 10 minutes on the circuit from Sintra station and the Lourel car park by way of the Moorish Castle, with the last service out of the Pena stop around 19:00, close to park closing. Since the traffic measures announced in July 2026, a coach leaves you at Lourel and you finish the climb on bus 434 or 435; taxis and ride-hailing cars are the exception that may still use a designated pick-up spot at Pena.
One gate detail matters if the chalet is on your list. The park entrance nearest the Chalet of the Countess of Edla closes between 12:00 and 14:00, with access and ticket sales available at the other entrances during those two hours.
So arrive by bus, by taxi or on foot, and treat the Main Entrance as your default unless you are heading straight out west.
Pena park trails, gradients and surfaces
Everything inside the park is uphill or downhill. Parques de Sintra allows about 30 minutes from the Main Entrance to the start of the palace route, and keeps that same half hour whether you walk it or take the transfer, which passes every 15 minutes. Use it as your unit of measurement for the rest of the hill: one leg of the main climb is half an hour on made paths at a steady gradient, with no flat stretch to recover on.
The steepest published number is the final approach from the transfer stop to the palace door, about 90 metres long and reaching 18%. Nothing on the official pages gives lengths or durations for the park's own loops, so ignore the kilometre figures you may have read elsewhere and plan by the fixed points instead: the Valley of the Lakes below the palace, the chalet out in the western reaches at 38 deg 47' 9.41" N, 9 deg 23' 58.48" W, and the High Cross due south of the Queen's Terrace at 528 metres. Walk between those four and you have seen the shape of the place.
A hop-on hop-off circuit works inside the park, running 10:00 to 17:30 and stopping at Picadeiro, the Lakes, Abegoaria and the Chalet. Those four stop names double as a rough map of the park's geography, and the circuit is separate from the transfer between the Main Entrance and the palace. The Essential Visit also comes with free digital resources, including a Pena Maps tool and the Zoomguide audio guide in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French.
A private day with the park in it
Eight hours from €149 with hotel pick-up, a driver/guide and Pena tickets on the skip-the-line option, so the time between the lakes, the chalet and the High Cross is yours to set.
★ 4.8/5 · 1,803 reviews
Which loops are worth it if you are skipping the interior
Start at the lakes and finish at the cross. From the Main Entrance the ground drops towards the Valley of the Lakes before climbing again, so the first half of a park visit feels easy and the second does not. The Queen's Fernery, the Monk's Grotto and the Temple of Columns line up on the same side of the hill and chain together without backtracking.
The High Cross is the one climb that pays off in any weather you get. At 528 metres it is the highest point of the Sintra hills, with views out to Lisbon, Cascais and the Atlantic, and the palace reads better from up there than from any terrace. There is more on it on the High Cross page of this site.
The Chalet of the Countess of Edla is the long leg of the day. Elise Hensler designed the alpine-style house herself, fire destroyed it in 1999, it reopened in 2011, and the reconstruction took the Europa Nostra European Union Award for Cultural Heritage in 2013. Admission to Pena park and palace covers it with no separate charge, and the rooms on the route are the Family Dining Room, the Kitchen, the Ivy Room, the bedroom and both toilettes. The chalet page on this site has the detail, floor by floor.
Timing the chalet decides your route. Doors close at 17:30 with the last admission at 17:00, and the nearest gate shuts from 12:00 to 14:00, so go out west early or leave it until mid afternoon.
- Short walk, no interior: the Valley of the Lakes and back up to the palace terraces
- Half a day: lakes, Queen's Fernery, Monk's Grotto, Temple of Columns, then the High Cross
- Full day: add the chalet and Pena Farm in the western reaches, arriving at the chalet before 17:00
Hours, admissions and rules to know before you set off
Park and palace are two separate admissions on two separate clocks. Gate hours for the park are 09:00 to 19:00, with the last ticket and the last entry both falling at 18:00, and nothing about the walking ties you to a booked moment. The palace interior opens half an hour later at 09:30, closes half an hour earlier at 18:30, sells its last interior ticket at 17:30 and takes its last admission at 18:00, strictly on the date and time printed on the ticket. That leaves an hour of park at each end of the day, whether or not you go inside.
Pets cannot be brought into Pena. Of the Sintra sites, dogs are welcome only at the Moorish Castle and the Park of Monserrate, and properly identified assistance dogs are admitted everywhere. Drones are banned across the sites, tripods need prior written authorisation, and photography inside the palace is not permitted.
Closures run to four dates a year: 24 and 25 December, then 31 December and 1 January. Check the operator's notices the day before you travel, because conditions on the ridge change fast.
| What | Open | Last admission |
|---|
| Park of Pena | 09:00 to 19:00 | 18:00 |
|---|
| Palace interior | 09:30 to 18:30 | 18:00, last ticket 17:30 |
|---|
| Chalet of the Countess of Edla | 09:00 to 17:30 | 17:00 |
|---|
| In-park hop-on hop-off circuit | 10:00 to 17:30 | Not stated |
|---|
Tours that leave time to walk the park
A day trip works for the park only if the schedule gives you hours on the hill rather than minutes. Of the tours listed here, the private day is the one built for that. Sintra Full Day Private Tour: Including Pena Palace + Regaleira hands you 8 hours and a vehicle to yourselves from €149, rated 4.8 ★ (1803 reviews), collecting you at your hotel and returning you there, with a driver/guide, Wi-Fi on board at no charge, and Pena Palace tickets covered when the skip-the-line option is the one you pick. You decide on the spot whether the spare half hour goes to the chalet or to the High Cross.
Sintra Tour with Pena Palace and Regaleira All Tickets Included arranges both timed monuments before you arrive: 8 hours from €120, 4.9 ★ (1220 reviews), a group of eight in an air-conditioned vehicle, every ticket plus guided visits at Pena Park and Palace and at Quinta da Regaleira, starting at Praça da Figueira in front of the statue.
Small Group Tour to Sintra, Pena Palace, Cabo Roca and Cascais spreads its 8 hours from €70, 4.9 ★ (5026 reviews), across Sintra, Cabo da Roca and Cascais, in a mini-van that takes no more than 8 people, with pick-up and drop-off at city-centre hotels and guiding at the outside of the monuments. The Pena ticket is not part of the price on that one: the guide carries tickets and you pay the guide. Free cancellation up to 24 hours before departure applies to all three, which is the clause you want on a ridge where the weather turns overnight.
The decision: take the €149 private day if the park is the reason you are going, the €120 small group if you want Pena and Regaleira guided and ticketed, and the €70 small group if Cabo da Roca and Cascais matter as much as the 85 hectares.
Questions people ask
Can I walk up to Pena Park from Sintra town?
Three marked trails climb from town. Villa Sassetti is the quickest at 1,850 m in about 45 minutes from Largo Ferreira de Castro, Santa Maria covers 1,770 m in roughly an hour, and Seteais is the long one at 2,410 m in 1h30. All three are waymarked and end at the park, so the climb inside the gate still waits for you.
Is Pena Park accessible with a wheelchair or reduced mobility?
A rear lifting platform on the paid transfer takes wheelchairs, that service between the Main Entrance and the palace comes past every 15 minutes, and one parking space at Pena is kept for disabled visitors. Stairways run the whole length of the palace visitor route, which puts the interior out of reach, and the last 90 metres up from the transfer stop climb at gradients of up to 18%. Check the state of the platforms on the day you go.
Can the park close while the palace stays open?
Yes. In high wind Parques de Sintra can close the park to circulation while the palace stays reachable only by the transfer bus, so the walking is off and the terraces become the visit. Notices go up on the operator's site.
Can I stay in the park for sunset?
Only if the sun goes down before the gates do. Closing is 19:00 and the final admission 18:00, which puts any sunset after 19:00 outside the hours you are allowed inside. In the months when it does work, the High Cross at 528 metres is the place to be, with the descent timed around the last 434 from the Pena stop around 19:00.
Is there a map of Pena Park on site?
The Essential Visit includes free digital resources: a Pena Maps orientation tool, the Zoomguide multimedia audio guide and the Pena Quest game, all in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French. The in-park circuit stops at Picadeiro, the Lakes, Abegoaria and the Chalet, and those four names are the easiest way to fix the layout in your head before you start walking.
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