Sintra Palaces Compared: Which to Visit, Tickets, Hours and Time

Sintra has five big sights: the Park and National Palace of Pena, the Moorish Castle, the National Palace of Sintra in the town centre, Quinta da Regaleira and the Park and Palace of Monserrate. In one day most visitors manage two or three. Pena is the one almost everyone wants, and you must book a date and an entry time for the palace; the Essential Visit ticket costs €20 for an adult. Quinta da Regaleira, the second favourite, is run by a different organisation with its own tickets and time slots.

If you have one day, the classic pairing is Pena with either the Moorish Castle (next door on the same ridge) or Regaleira (near the town centre). This guide sets out what each place is, what the tickets cost as listed on 3 October 2026, the hours, and how much of your day each one takes. Prices and hours change; check before you go.

Who runs what

It helps to know that Sintra’s sights are not sold as one ticket.

Parques de Sintra runs Pena (park, palace and the Chalet of the Countess of Edla), the Moorish Castle, the National Palace of Sintra, Monserrate, the Convent of the Capuchos and the Cabo da Roca lighthouse. One online shop sells them all, with a discount for several at once.
Fundação Cultursintra runs Quinta da Regaleira, with a separate ticketing site and its own rules.
Biester Palace, on the bus 434 route, is run separately again.

The practical result: you can buy Pena and the castle together, but Regaleira is always a separate purchase.

The five main sights at a glance

Sight	What it is	Adult ticket	Hours (October 2026)	Time to allow
Park and Palace of Pena	Romantic hilltop palace and a vast wooded park	€20 Essential Visit	Park 9:00–19:00, palace 9:30–18:30	Half a day
Moorish Castle	Medieval walls along a granite ridge	€12	9:30–18:00	A couple of hours
National Palace of Sintra	Royal palace in the town centre	€13 Essential Visit	9:30–18:30	A couple of hours
Quinta da Regaleira	Turn-of-the-century estate with the Initiation Well	Up to €20	Closes 18:30 October–March	Two to three hours
Park and Palace of Monserrate	Exotic gardens and an ornate palace	€12	Park 9:00–19:00, palace 9:30–18:00	A couple of hours plus travel

The “time to allow” column is a planning estimate, not a rule. It includes getting around inside each site, which at Pena and Monserrate takes longer than people expect.

Pena: the palace and the park

Pena is the reason Sintra is famous. In 1503 Manuel I ordered a monastery built on the hilltop, and in 1838 the consort king Ferdinand II bought what was left of it and added a new palace. The result has two wings: the former monastery, or Old Palace, with the private apartments, and the New Palace, with the state rooms. UNESCO describes nineteenth-century Sintra as the first centre of European Romantic architecture, and Pena is the most important site in the Cultural Landscape of Sintra, inscribed as World Heritage in 1995.

The park is half the visit. Ferdinand II planted trees from every continent across its 85 hectares, which the park describes as the most important arboretum in Portugal. Inside it you will find the Chalet of the Countess of Edla, built by Ferdinand II and his second wife, Elise Hensler, on the western side, and the High Cross, at 528 metres the highest point in the Sintra hills.

One thing to know before you go: the palace is frequently hidden by the mists typical of the Sintra hills. A clear day is never guaranteed, even in summer.

Pena tickets: which one to buy

Parques de Sintra now sells several ways to see Pena. As listed on 3 October 2026:

Essential Visit: €20 for adults (18–64), €18 for youths (6–17) and seniors (over 65), free for children under 6, €65 for a family of two adults and two youths. It is a self-guided route through the New Palace, the wing of state and reception rooms, plus the whole park, including the Chalet. This is the ticket most visitors need.
Complete Visit: €45 for adults, €20 for youths, €35 for seniors. It adds the Private Apartments to the New Palace, in groups of at most 20 people, accompanied by a Parques de Sintra visitor assistant.
Guided visit to the palace: €75 for adults.
Park only: €12 for adults and €10 for youths, if you want the gardens and the Chalet without the palace.

Transport inside the park is not included. The round-trip transfer between the park entrance and the palace is a €4.50 supplement for anyone over 6, and the electric hop-on hop-off circuit through the park costs €4.50 and makes 10 stops over 2.5 km. The park has two gates, the main entrance and the Lakes entrance.

How Pena’s timed entry works

This is where most problems happen, so it is worth reading slowly.

The time on your ticket is your entry to the palace, not to the park. You enter the park when you like, then present yourself at the palace door at your slot.
Allow about 30 minutes from the park gate to the palace, however you travel, on foot or by transfer.
You cannot go in early. If you reach the palace before your booked time, you wait.
You cannot go in late. If you arrive after your slot, you cannot enter and the ticket is not refunded.

Since the slots were introduced, they also set a maximum number of visitors per day, which is how Parques de Sintra manages a palace that had 1.9 million visitors (park and palace together) in 2025. The park’s own advice is to book an afternoon slot, when the palace currently has fewer visitors, and spend the morning in the park.

Fast-track tickets, sold through resellers listed on the park’s own site, give priority access at the main entrance to the park and at the palace door. Only 25 entries in each palace slot are reserved for them, and the same rule applies: no late arrivals.

The Moorish Castle

The Moorish Castle was founded in the tenth century, when the Moors held the Iberian Peninsula. What you visit today is a line of walls running along the granite ridge next to Pena, with towers you can climb. The parapet walk looks out over the town and across to Pena; the Royal Tower, the highest point of the walls, gives the classic view of Pena on its hilltop.

Ticket: €12 for adults, €10 for youths.
Hours: 9:30–18:00, last ticket and admission 17:30.
Dogs are welcome.

Inside the walls are the remains of an Islamic settlement, grain silos and a medieval church, but the castle is mostly about the walk and the views. It pairs naturally with Pena: the two are on the same ridge, and the park’s own walking route goes from one to the other in about 30 minutes. Expect steps and uneven stone, and avoid it in strong wind.

The National Palace of Sintra

The National Palace stands in the town centre, its two conical chimneys crowning the royal kitchen. Parques de Sintra calls it the only palace that spans the whole history of Portugal. Inside, the Swan Room is the largest room, and the Magpie Room takes its name from the 136 magpies painted on its ceiling.

Essential Visit: €13 for adults, €10 for youths.
Full Visit: €35 for adults.
Hours: 9:30–18:30, last ticket and admission 17:30.

It is the easiest of the five to reach, 10–15 minutes from the station, and the one that needs no climbing. The ticket office closes from 12pm to 1pm, although ticket machines stay available. It is a good first stop of the day, or a good choice if the weather closes the hills.

Quinta da Regaleira

Quinta da Regaleira was designed and built around the turn of the twentieth century for António Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro, with the Italian architect and scenographer Luigi Manini. Its gardens, towers, grottoes and the Initiation Well, a deep spiral staircase into the ground, make it the most theatrical of Sintra’s estates.

Practical points from the Quinta’s own pages:

Price: tickets on its ticketing site run up to €20 at face value (€21.48 with the booking fee). Children up to 5 go free but still need a ticket.
Time slots: you choose an entry slot when you buy. There is a grace period of at most 1 hour after the time on the ticket.
Hours: the Quinta closes at 18:30 from October to March and at 19:30 from April to September. The last slot is 16:30 and the last entry 17:30.
The well is one-way. You may only walk downwards inside the Initiation Well, and the underground walkway to the Eastern Grotto is one-way too.
No big bags or snacks. Suitcases, trolleys and large backpacks are not allowed, and nor are snacks.
Visits are self-guided with a map. An audio guide with the map costs €5 on top of the ticket, has 30 listening points and cannot be reserved.

Changes need notice: rescheduling must be requested 48 hours ahead on the ticketing site, there are no exchanges or extensions, and refunds are given only if the Quinta closes unexpectedly. It is closed on 1 January and on 24, 25 and 31 December.

Monserrate

Monserrate gets far fewer visitors than Pena. The palace was designed for Sir Francis Cook by the British architect James Knowles Junior, and the gardens hold exotic species sourced from every corner of the world. It is calmer than Pena: in 2025 it had 200,000 visitors, against 1.9 million at Pena.

Ticket: €12 for adults, €10 for youths, park and palace.
Hours: park 9:00–19:00 (last ticket 17:30, last admission 18:00); palace 9:30–18:00 (last ticket 17:00).
Works: restoration of the palace roofs runs until the first quarter of 2027, with scaffolding and a temporary cover on the building. The palace stays open, but your photographs will show it.
Getting around: the electric hop-on hop-off service inside the park is temporarily out of service, so plan to walk.
Dogs are welcome in the park.

Monserrate is 4 km from the centre; bus 435 and Carris Metropolitana bus 1253 serve it from the station.

Beyond the big five

Convent of the Capuchos: a small, austere convent in the forest. A ticket costs €11 for adults. It is hard to reach: bus 1253 gets you within a 40-minute walk.
Villa Sassetti: free, open 10:00–18:00, on the walking trail from the town to the castle.
Cabo da Roca lighthouse: on the westernmost point of continental Europe, now also run by Parques de Sintra. The essential visit costs €5 for adults, 9:30–17:30.
Chalet of the Countess of Edla: included in every Pena ticket, so do not pay for it twice.

Visiting with children or limited mobility

Sintra is hilly, and the sights differ a lot in how much walking they demand.

Pena is the hardest work. The climb from the park gate to the palace takes about 30 minutes on foot. The round-trip transfer from the main entrance to the palace is a €4.50 supplement for anyone over 6, and the park’s electric hop-on hop-off circuit, also €4.50, makes 10 stops over 2.5 km. Children under 6 go free.
Quinta da Regaleira is compact but rugged, with steps, tunnels and uneven paths. Because of the terrain, visitors with restricted mobility and anyone younger than 15 must always be accompanied. The Initiation Well is a descent on stone steps, one-way, downwards only.
The Moorish Castle is a walk along walls and up towers, with steep steps.
The National Palace of Sintra is the easiest: it is in the town centre, 10–15 minutes from the station, with no hill to climb.
Monserrate: the electric hop-on hop-off service is currently out of service, so plan to walk the gardens.

For a family day with young children, the National Palace in the morning and the Park of Pena with the transfer in the afternoon is a gentler pairing than the castle walk.

Which to choose

One sight only: Pena, with an afternoon slot.
Two sights, on foot: the Moorish Castle in the morning, then Pena.
Two sights, less climbing: the National Palace and Quinta da Regaleira, both near the centre.
The full classic day: Pena and Regaleira, which is what most day tours from Lisbon cover.
Avoiding crowds: Monserrate, with the National Palace or Regaleira.

The order matters more than the choice. Our guide to one day in Sintra puts these into realistic plans with walking times.

Buying tickets: online, at the gate or through a tour

Online on the park’s own site is the safest choice for Pena. You skip the ticket-office queue and go straight to the entrance, and online tickets can be rescheduled until 6pm on the day before. Tickets bought at a ticket office or machine cannot have their date or time changed.

Discounts apply when you buy several Parques de Sintra sites in one purchase: 5% for 2 sites, 6% for 3, 7% for 4, 8% for 5 and 10% for 6. Regaleira is never part of that basket.

Closures happen. The Parques de Sintra sites open every day except 24, 25 and 31 December and 1 January, but sites in the forest can close at short notice for fire risk or extreme weather. On 16 December 2025 strong winds closed the Park of Pena; in July 2026, worsening conditions in the forest closed monuments there until 6 July, while the National Palace of Sintra and Monserrate stayed open.

Through a tour or reseller, you get a ticket bundled with transport or a guide. Check exactly which Pena visit is included. At Regaleira, external guides may not lead tours inside the palace or the Initiation Well, so a guided tour there splits up at those points. Our tours page lists ticket and tour options side by side, and our guide to getting to Sintra covers the buses between the sites.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to book Pena Palace in advance?

You need a ticket with a date and an entry time for the palace. Buying online lets you choose an afternoon slot, which the park recommends, and skip the ticket-office queue.

How much is the Pena Palace ticket?

As listed on 3 October 2026, the Essential Visit costs €20 for adults and €18 for youths and seniors; children under 6 go free. The Complete Visit, with the Private Apartments, costs €45. Check current prices before you go.

Is Quinta da Regaleira included in the Pena ticket?

No. Regaleira is run by Fundação Cultursintra and sells its own timed tickets, up to €20 at face value.

Which is better, Pena or Regaleira?

They are very different. Pena is a palace and a huge park on a hilltop; Regaleira is a compact estate of gardens, grottoes and the Initiation Well near the town centre. If you can only do one, most people choose Pena; if you dislike crowds and climbs, Regaleira is easier.

Can I visit the Moorish Castle and Pena on the same day?

Yes. They share a ridge, and the park’s walking route links them in about 30 minutes. Book your Pena slot for after the castle.