Castle of the Moors Castelo dos Mouros Palace of Sintra Palacio Nacional de Sintra Debussy Deux Arab

The Castle of the Moors, Castelo dos Mouros, Palace of Sintra, Palacio Nacional de Sintra, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Deux Arabesques, First movement, Andantino con moto, Second movement, Allegretto scherzando, Walter Gieseking (1895-1956)
by Kari Gröhn karigrohncom

The Castle of the Moors (Castelo dos Mouros) is situated on the top of the Sintra Mountains, where it has a panoramic view of Sintra, and on a clear day the Atlantic Ocean. The castle was constructed during the period of Muslim Iberia in the 8th and 9th centuries. After the conquest of Lisbon (1147), the castle surrendered voluntarily to Christian forces. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake affected the stability of the castle, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The climate of Sintra is characterized by low temperatures and elevated precipitation, due to its proximity to the sea.

The Palace of Sintra (Palacio Nacional de Sintra), also called Town Palace (Palacio da Vila) is the best preserved medieval royal residence in Portugal. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The history of the castle begins in the Moorish Al-Andalus era, after the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th century. The castle was the residence of the Islamic Moorish Taifa of Lisbon rulers. In the 12th century the town was conquered by King Afonso Henriques, who took the 'Sintra Palace' castle for his use. The blend of Gothic, Manueline, Moorish, and Mudejar styles in the present palace is, however, mainly the result of building campaigns in the 15th and early 16th centuries.

The conical chimneys of the kitchen dominate the skyline of the town. The oldest rooms of the palace include the Arab Room (Sala dos Arabes) decorated with intricate motifs of ceramic tiles (azulejos), the Swans' Room (Sala dos Cisnes) with a magnificent ceiling decorated with swans, and the Magpies Room (Sala das Pegas) painted with 136 magpies, each one holding a rose and a scroll with the words por bem (for honour). This relates to the story that the king John I was caught in the act of kissing a lady-in-waiting by his queen Philippa of Lancaster. To put a stop to all the gossip, he had the room decorated with as many magpies as there were women at the court.