Random photo of the week

After talking about it for a while… here it is: the Pena palace, in Sintra!

Built about 30 years before the Neuschwanstein castle in Bavaria it was the favourite palace of queen Amélia, the last queen of Portugal.

Originally a chapel and later a monastery, a lightning badly damaged the building and, shortly after that, the 1755 earthquake would reduce it to ruins. King consort Ferdinand II was the main personality behind the building of this palace, which would become one of the favourite palaces of the Portuguese royal family. The writer Hans Christian Andersen, who visited Sintra in 1866, was also amazed by its beauty.