Palácio Nacional de Sintra

The National Palace of Sintra seems to rise out of the town itself, with its two white chimneys announcing a place where royal history has remained intact. With a thousand years of life behind it, and as the only Portuguese medieval royal palace preserved in its entirety, it was inhabited by almost all the kings and queens of Portugal, who left behind layers of Gothic, Manueline and Mudéjar architecture. Inside, the palace surprises less through its façade than through the intimacy of its rooms and the ceilings that speak of power, taste and memory. It is worth lingering in the Hall of Coats of Arms, where Manuel the First places himself at the centre of a noble order represented by seventy-two heraldic shields, and in the famous Hall of Magpies, whose painted ceiling of one hundred and thirty-six birds still provokes questions, because its exact meaning remains unknown. Visiting this palace is like entering a royal house still inhabited by ceremony and secrecy.