Cruz Alta

A stone cross marks the highest point of the Sintra hills, 529 metres up inside the grounds of Pena Park, about a 40-minute walk from the Pena Palace gates. It's a genuine hilltop viewpoint rather than a monument to visit for itself: on a clear day the panorama runs from the palace's own turrets and the ruined Moorish Castle walls, across the wooded Sintra ridge, over Lisbon and the Tagus estuary, to the Atlantic, reputedly reaching as far as the Berlengas islands offshore.