To understand Pena Palace and the beautiful Gardens sourrounding the Palace the tourist has to see the opera Parsifal…An opera with three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, a 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival (Percival) and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Perceval, the Story of the Grail, by Chrétien de Troyes’.

Parsifal is one of King Arthur’s legendary Knights of the Round Table, which can be found  in the Pena Palace Gardens.

Wagner’s spelling of Parsifal instead of the Parzival he had used up to 1877 is informed by an erroneous etymology of the name Percival deriving it from a supposedly Arabic origin,Fal Parsi meaning “pure fool”. Playing with words…

Remember the most important it is not inside the Pena Palace but in the Gardens and the Castle of The Moors.

All starts with the Warrior in the Garden, D.Fernando put the it exacly in the place where he love to seat and paint.

The Warrior (or Parsifal or problably D.Fernando of Saxe Coburg-Gotha)

High Cross, Cruz Alta (or Excalibur with the sword inside the rock)

Pena Palace, The Castle of the Holy Grail

Chalet Condessa d’Edla, Pena Palace Gardens or Klingsor’s magic garden

Duck House, Klingsor’s magic garden

The Castle of The Moors (or Avalon)

Lawrence’s Hotel (the oldest hotel on the Iberian Peninsula)

Monserrate Palace

Seteais Palace Hotel

Vila Palace

Quinta da Regaleira

All Photos in this Post and Page were Courtesy from Bruno Nabiça.

The Perfect Tourist  eMagazine

In it, one can find a  long duration exhibition, whose genesis was born from the hands of the collector Miguel Barbosa and his wife, Fernanda Barbosa, who, for about 50 years, gathered a unique collection consisting of thousands of fossils of cultural value and scientific incalculable.

This Museum has, in addition to the permanent exhibition room, with a Temporary Exhibition prepared to receive many shows and events, with a reservation and Laboratory for the treatment and study of the parts with a small Documentation Service with a specialized  shop and a cafeteria.

The exhibition space has a dynamic presentation using the concepts of furniture and equipment based in modernity, playing also with the use of new technologies.

Free entrance for Tuesday to Friday from 10.00amto to 06.00pm.

On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, from 02.00pm to 06.00pm,

Closed on Mondays.

For more information please visit:

http://portugaltravelmaps.com/city/azoiarte/

Location: Moorish Castle | 6 to 15 September

Every day throughout the opening times:

Stalls selling local products and crafts brought by Moroccan artisans~, Cooperatives, henna tattoo, Atelier calligraphy
Photography exhibition Mustapha Meskine (Grand Prix of the National Geographic Society 2008)

Moroccan cuisine by chefs invited by the Morocco Embassy

Quinta da Regaleira is an estate located near the historic center of Sintra,Portugal. It is classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO within the “Cultural Landscape of Sintra”. Along with other palaces in this area (such as the Pena, Monserrate and Seteais palaces), it is one of the main tourist attractions.

It consists of a romantic palace and chapel, and a luxurious park featuring lakes, grottoes, wells, benches, fountains, and a vast array of exquisite constructions. The palace is also known as “Palace of Monteiro the Millionaire”, from the nickname of its first owner, António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro. 

The land that is now Quinta da Regaleira had many owners through time. But in 1892 it belonged to the Barons of Regaleira, a rich merchants family from OPorto, when it was purchased that year byCarvalho Monteiro for 25,000 réis. Monteiro wished to build a bewildering place where he could gather symbols that would reflect his interests and ideologies. With the assistance of the Italian architect Luigi Manini, he designed the 4-hectare estate with its enigmatic buildings, believed to hide symbols related to alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. The architecture of the estate evokes Roman, Gothic, Renaissance and Manueline architectural styles. The construction of the current estate commenced in 1904 and most of it was concluded by 1910.

The Regaleira Palace (Portuguese: Palácio da Regaleira) bears the same name as the whole estate. Sometimes, the name “Regaleira Palace” is used to refer to the entire estate.

The façade is characterized by exuberantly Gothic pinnacles, gargoyles, capitals, and an impressive octagonal tower.

The palace has five floors (a ground floor, three upper floors and a basement). The ground floor contains a series of hallways connecting the living room, dining room, billiards room, balcony, some smaller rooms and several stairways. In turn, the first upper floor contains bedrooms (Carvalho Monteiro’s bedroom used to be the one with a balcony) and a dressing room. The second upper floor contains Carvalho Monteiro’s office, and female servants’ bedrooms. The third upper floor contains the ironing room and a smaller room with access to a terrace. Finally, the basement contains the male servants’ bedrooms, the kitchen (which possessed an elevator for lifting food to the ground floor), and storage rooms.