Pena Palace crowns a hilltop above the town of Sintra in Portugal, built between 1842 and 1854 on the ruins of an earlier monastery for King consort Ferdinand II, who took a direct hand in shaping its design together with the architect Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege. The palace deliberately mixes historical revival styles, combining Neo-Gothic, Neo-Manueline, Neo-Islamic and Neo-Renaissance elements within a single building, and its exterior walls are painted in vivid red and yellow, making it one of the most visually striking examples of nineteenth century Romanticist architecture in Europe. Its hilltop position, often shrouded in the mist that gathers over the Sintra hills, gives it sweeping views toward the Atlantic coast. Pena Palace forms part of the Cultural Landscape of Sintra, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995, and remains one of Portugal's most visited monuments.
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