Moorish Castle (Castelo dos Mouros)

Along the Moorish Castle’s walls and towers

Two rings of wall circle the hilltop. You walk the walls and towers, and between the rings are the remains of the village that stood up here.

The Praça de Armas and the keep

You come in at the Praça de Armas, the old parade ground, and the first climb takes you to the keep, the Torre de Menagem. From there the walls lead on to the Royal Tower, just under an hour in all on the itinerary of Parques de Sintra, which runs the castle.

The castle is built on the granite itself, so the steps are tall and some stretches of wall walk have no railing at the edge. Visitors who struggle with stairs call it hard going, and up on the ridge it can be windy.

The walls and the Royal Tower

The walls are built of granite blocks and run between the boulders and cliffs of the ridge. As you climb, Pena keeps appearing on the facing hill.

At the end of the route, the Royal Tower has Pena Palace as its backdrop. It was one of Ferdinand II’s favourite spots, where he came looking for inspiration.

The view down over Sintra

On the other side of the walls the whole town lies below. You can pick out the National Palace of Sintra, the royal palace in the old town, by its two huge white chimneys.

Beyond the houses the plain runs out to the coast, and on a clear day the Atlantic shows on the horizon.

Inside the Moorish Castle: the village, the church and the cistern

Inside the walls was a village. Its people dug silos into the rock to store grain, and you can still see them, next to the Islamic quarter where their houses stood.

After the Christian conquest of 1147 came the church of São Pedro de Canaferrim, built in the 12th century as Sintra’s first parish church. Traces of Gothic wall painting from the 1400s survive in its apse.

Centuries later Ferdinand turned it into a Romantic ruin. Today it’s the castle’s interpretation centre, with finds from the digs of 2009 to 2013.

The cistern is 13th-century, going by the masons’ marks and its pointed doorway. It held about 600 cubic metres of water under a vault with two air vents, built partly from the granite of an older building.

Moorish Castle tickets and opening hours

Tickets here are for the day, so the castle fits round your Pena slot. The Lisboa Card, €31 for 24 hours, takes 15% off, but only at the castle’s own ticket desk.

The ticket with an optional audio guide is €13.20 online, and visitors who bought ahead say they didn’t have to queue.

Until the end of January 2027 Parques de Sintra is replacing the visitor building just before the entrance, with a wooden viewpoint and ticket machines to come. Two visitors this year found a first ticket office shut and the open one further up the path.

Dogs are allowed here, unlike in Pena Park next door, but they stay on the paths, one per person.

Who built the Moorish Castle, and who restored it

The Moors, the Muslims who ruled much of the Iberian Peninsula for centuries, founded the castle in the 10th century. They held Sintra until 1147, when it passed to Afonso Henriques, Portugal’s first king, after he took Lisbon and Santarém.

The castle stayed in Christian hands, and the hilltop village was lived in until the 15th century, when it began to be gradually abandoned.

In the 19th century Ferdinand II restored the castle in the Romantic spirit of his time, but the works damaged part of the Christian graveyard.

Ferdinand had the bones gathered into a tomb you can still see. Its inscription reads “What man brought together, only God may separate”.

Archaeologists have dug here since 1976, with the castle’s own research project running since 2009. The castle has been on UNESCO’s list since 1995, as part of the Cultural Landscape of Sintra.

On foot or by bus to the Moorish Castle

Bus 434 from Sintra station stops at the castle on its way up to Pena. The Lisboa Card covers the 40-minute train from Rossio but not the bus.

On foot, it’s about 15 minutes from the old town to the church of Santa Maria, then about 45 more up through the woods to the castle.