Monserrate Palace in Sintra

You're standing at Monserrate Palace, a summer villa on a hillside near Sintra. Take a good look at the building. It seems to have stepped out of an Eastern fairy tale, yet there's something medieval and Gothic about it too. That mix was entirely deliberate. Architect James Knowles blended Romanticism with Moorish Revival and neo-Gothic touches. The Moorish flavour is no accident. Until the thirteenth century, this region was part of Muslim Al-Andalus.