Castle of the Moors

The Castle of the Moors is a ruined medieval fortification on the ridge above Sintra, built during the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. The walls snake along the rocky ridgeline for several hundred metres, and walking the ramparts offers some of the best views in the Sintra area: down to the town and the National Palace below, across to the yellow towers of Pena Palace next door, and on a clear day all the way to the Atlantic coast.

The castle is less crowded than Pena Palace and takes about an hour to walk properly. The stone walls are largely intact from the medieval period, with the towers and gates restored in the 19th century. There is no roof or interior — this is a walls-and-views attraction, and a very good one. Wear shoes with grip; the rampart paths are uneven and can be slippery in wet weather.

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A story
The castle was built by the Moors during the 8th or 9th century as part of a chain of defensive fortifications controlling the coastal approaches to Lisbon. It was captured by Portuguese forces under Afonso Henriques in 1147, the same campaign that took Lisbon. By the 18th century it had fallen into complete ruin; it was Ferdinand II who restored it in the 19th century as part of his wider transformation of the Sintra hills into a Romantic landscape.

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