Pena National Palace!

Another day and another swap card received, this time from JoaoNogueira in Portugal. It is my second swap with him. I sent him a view card of Blenheim Palace, a UNESCO site he is missing, and I received a lovely card of Pena National Palace, part of the UNESCO WHS at Sintra. 

Pena National Palace at Sintra

In the 19th century Sintra became the first centre of European Romantic architecture. Ferdinand II turned a ruined monastery into a castle where this new sensitivity was displayed in the use of Gothic, Egyptian, Moorish and Renaissance elements and in the creation of a park blending local and exotic species of trees. Other fine dwellings, built along the same lines in the surrounding serra , created a unique combination of parks and gardens which influenced the development of landscape architecture throughout Europe. The Pena Palace, high on a peak in the Serra, is a work of pure Romanticism, designed by the Portuguese architect Possidónio da Silva. Within the 19th-century palace are the church, cloister and refectory of the monastery, richly decorated. It was inscribed onto the UNESCO WHS, reference 723, in 1995.