Photograph showing the Pena National Palace at Sintra, Portugal, perched on the top of steep rocky cliffs, with forest around the base of the hill. The site, originally occupied by a small Medieval chapel, grew into a monastery populated by monks of the order of St Jerome until the mid-18th century when severe lighting and then an earthquake reduced the building to ruins. King Ferdinand II of Portugal (1816-85), consort of Queen Maria II of Portugal (1819-53) and first cousin of Queen Victoria as well as of Prince Albert, acquired the abandoned monastery and transformed it, between 1842 and 1854, into a palace with the help of Baron Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege (1777-1855), a German mining engineer, army officer and amateur architect. The palace, considered one of the finest examples of Romantic architecture, was made, together with its park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.
