Pena National Palace
Located in Sintra, Portugal, Pena National Palace is is a Romanticist palace built on the top of a hill above the town of Sintra.
Originally a monastery, Pena National Palace was was a small, quiet place for meditation, housing a maximum of eighteen monks.
Ruined during the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, King Ferdinand then set out to transform the remains of the monastery into a palace that would serve as a summer residence for the Portuguese royal family.
The commission to rebuild the Romantic style building was given to Lieutenant-General and mining engineer Baron Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege who began the construction in 1842and completed it in 1847.
A national monument, Pena National Palace constitutes one of the major expressions of 19th-century Romanticism in the world.
Declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1995, the Pena National Palace is also one of the Seven Wonders of Portugal.