Sintra

Raised in 1854 on the ruins of a monastery and painted yellow and red so that it shows from the valley floor. Tickets for the state rooms carry a time, and you need to be at the door when it comes round.

A spiral of 27m sinks into the garden like a well and lets out through a tunnel. The lower steps stay wet and slick, so take the rail on the way down.

Walls laid along the ridge in the eighth century now serve as a walkway on top. In the short breaks when the fog lifts, the sea and Pena Palace show at the same time.

Two kitchen chimneys rise 33m and serve as a bearing from anywhere in town. Each room carries a different painted ceiling, which is how the magpie room and the swan room took their names.

An English owner put the house up during the nineteenth century and planted the garden in zones by continent. Few people come, so sitting on the grass draws no attention.

The westernmost point of mainland Europe, where the cliff drops 140m into the sea. The wind never really stops, so a hat is better carried than worn.

Only a narrow dirt path between cliffs reaches this sand, where two rock stacks stand out in the water. The sea runs cold with a strong pull, and most visitors keep to the beach.

A tiny house for eight friars where the ceilings force you to stoop from room to room. Cork was fixed to the walls against the damp, and the smell of it has not left.

White houses step down the cliff face above a pool cut into the rock. At high tide the swell breaks over the pool wall and refills it.

The lawn in front of an eighteenth century house frames the hills and the palace through its arch. The building works as a hotel, yet nobody stops you walking onto the terrace.

An Alpine-style lodge in the Pena park woods, built by Ferdinand II with his second wife, Elise Hensler. Cork trims its windows and eaves, giving it the air of a house built from bark. Fire gutted it in 1999; restored, it reopened in 2011.

A stone cross on the highest rock of the Sintra hills, inside Pena park. Walking up through the woods from the palace, you end up looking sideways down on Pena's yellow and red walls. Clear days show the Atlantic one way and the Tagus estuary the other.

The widest sand on the Sintra coast, with surf good enough for bodyboard contests. Stairs at its southern end climb to a row of dinosaur footprints pressed into the cliff. That rock layer now stands upright, so the tracks seem to walk up a wall.

High cliffs wall in this little cove, which has a rock arch and sea caves. Low water widens the beach enough to wander into the northern caves. Rising water cuts off the way back, so read the tides before going in.

A small 17th-century chapel set on top of a granite peak, halfway along the hill road to Cabo da Roca. A few minutes' climb from the car park opens Guincho beach and the Cabo da Roca lighthouse beneath you. Fog often sits on the summit, so pick a clear day.

An 18th-century rococo royal palace at Queluz, between Lisbon and Sintra. The garden canal, tiled on its walls and floor, is where the royals went boating. King Pedro IV was born in the Don Quixote Room and died in the same room.

A palace and monastery begun at Mafra, north of Sintra, by King Joao V in 1717 with Brazilian gold. Each of its two towers holds a carillon, and in the marble-floored library bats hunt insects at night to protect the books. UNESCO listed it in 2019.