Things to do in Sintra

People settled in the Sintra hills long before Portugal existed, and the Romans knew the range as the Mountain of the Moon. The Moors built the castle on its ridge, and in 1147, after the conquest of Lisbon, the hills passed to the first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques. The National Palace became a royal residence in the Middle Ages and stayed in use for centuries, and in the 19th century Romantic kings turned the hills into the landscape of palaces and gardens that UNESCO listed in 1995.