Sintra Borough of Sintra

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The district that is now covered by the Borough of Sintra has been inhabited by man for a very long time indeed. The privileged geographical and environmental situation has over the ages attracted and fixed settlers. Numerous archaeological remains, including prehistoric and protohistoric tombs, testify to its antiquity. Sintra has remained even nowadays the "noble town surrounded by many estates, pleasant woods with plentiful springs of excellent water", referred to by various old authors. A tourist region par excellence, Sintra is one of the most delightful places to be found in Portugal. With its extensive range of green bills with its crags - the Serra de Sintra - so picturesquely situated and offering stupendous views of the coastline with its impressive beauty, Sintra is indeed "a garden of the earthly paradise". The potentialities of the Sintra district are not confined to the wild enchantments of the Serra, sometimes wreathed in mist, and to the artistic heritage of the Old Town, described by Byron as "the most pleasing in Europe", but also include valuable archaeological remains, particularly from the Roman period, ancient manor houses, churches of personalised artistic value and characteristic villages.

The three National Palace - Palácio da Vila, Palácio da Pena and Palácio de Queluz - and the various municipal museums contain important historical and artistic collections which document, on the one and, the dynamic way in which the peoples of Sintra have throughout the centuries succeeded in enhancing their space and, on the other hand, the attraction that Sintra has always had for outstanding Portuguese and foreign artists, who have enriched a patrimony that is of worldwide importance. The tourist potentialities of Sintra also include winegrowing, of proven standard, the quarries producing marble (which for centuries have embellished various regions), its traditional confectionery and cooking and, of course, the fecund production of its handicraft workshops. "In all the land of Portugal, the whole expanse of Europe, Sintra stands out as one of the loveliest, rarest places that Nature's prodigious hand has created", wrote the poet Afonso Lopes Vieira. And the English poet Robert Southey describes Sintra as "the most bless, spot on the whole inhabitable globe". With the inauguration of the railway between Lisbon and Sintra in 1887, the town became popular as a summer resort with the middle class of Lisbon and expanded in urban terms, while at the same time it attracted well known scientists and historians, who began methodically to study Sintra's ancient heritage.

Portugal > Tourism > Lisbon > Sintra > Borough of Sintra	e-Mail

	Borough of Sintra Sintra