Report on a visit: Sintra
Why Sintra is known all over the world? Why who visit Lisbon have to see this small town built in the western point of the Lisbon’s region? It is easy to answer! Sintra is fantastic and I have never known anyone who didn’t love it.
Its castles, its views over the sea ... it is unique.
During the Easter holidays my brother came to see me. Some days before he had fallen in Love with Sintra’s castles just by watching them on tv and in particular with the Quinta da Regaleira. In a sunny but windy morning, we took the train in Entrecampos’ station and 40 minutes later we were there. My brother could not believe on his eyes. Already in the station we could see, on the top of the mountains, two castels: the Palacio da Pena and the Castelo dos Mouros.
After about twenty minutes of walk in the city center, at the end of a long street a great show opened in front of us: the Quinta da Regaleira. This was the summer residence of the Carvalho Monteiro family and it was built in the neo- manueline style. We decided to visit first the palace and try to breathe the climate of that time. The most sensational room in the palace was on the second floor: the library. In the room the lights were turned off and, thanks to a particular game of mirrors, it seemed suspended in air. We were afraid to cross it; we thought that the floor could not hold our weight.
However, the most wonderful thing of the palace was the park. We had never seen anything so strange. The guide told us that the garden was the image of the Cosmos and for this reason was adorned with statues of classical Gods such as Orpheus, Venus, Flora and others. All the park was crossed by underground tunnels conflating in ponds. Thought one of them we arrived at something that had, on television, caught the attention of my brother: a underground tower. This was a tower accessible by a monumental spiral stairway. It had to create a link between the terrestrial and the hell worlds. While the guide explained, I returned with the mind on the Divine Comedy by Dante and the correlation between the three worlds after death.
Even if Italy is full of artistic beauty we had never seen anything so sensational. The environment could revive the mystical atmosphere of that place. Unfortunately, in the afternoon began to rain and it was useless to visit another castle. We decided to return to Lisbon hoping to visit sooner the other castles.
This short article is certainly not sufficient to describe the emotions that we fell during that visit but I hope they, at least, managed to capture your curiosity.
Sintra is impossible to describe, you have to see it to understand.
