Let’s visit Santa Maria, a small place built between rocks and greenery and where he stayed, at José O’Neill’s house, Hans Christian Andersen, during his stay in Sintra.
All the way to the Serra is a garden, where nature and art combine, being the most beautiful ride imaginable.
At the top of the Serra, the author was amazed by the landscape that is visible from here: in the direction of Lisbon you can see the mountains beyond the Tagus, to the west you can see the Ocean and to the north the Mafra Convent.
From the Quinta de José O’Neill, Andersen could see the road to Sintra, where the old Palace seemed to our illustrious visitor a “convent with small annexes.” And the chimneys of the Palace compared them to “two bottles of champagne coupled .
The Pombal Palace, a half-bourgeois building with its landscaped terraces, where it visited the Count of Almeida.
Coincidentally, he met Edward Lytton, a poet, and spent the summer in Sintra with his wife. With them he visited the palace of Monte Cristo, the Fifth of the Viceroy of India (Quinta da Penha Verde), the Monserrate Palace of the rich English Cook.
They passed the palace of “Monte Cristo” (Quinta do Relógio).
On the way back, he gazes at the water fall and in that Rococo-style mansion, (Seteais) construction completed in the time of the Marquis of the Frontier.
The Pena Palace “Different, more beautiful and picturesque, D. Fernando’s summer palace rises high, dominating the whole region.”
“The day of departure was approaching. It cost me to separate myself from my dear and generous friend Jose and from all the beauty of Sintra. In a vertiginous race, with the wind whistling, we returned to “Quinta do Pinheiro” (Lisbon) “.
We couldn’t stop there because of the lack of time but it’s awesome to know that he saw the same views as we did. I heard he stayed there for three years and not just. Summer. Did he ome back? Did he write something while he was there,?
Hello, no he never came back to Portugal aftet his trip that took 3 months 🙂
He wrote Skruptudsen while in Portugal.
“In the notes to the stories published in the Complete Works of 1868, Andersen mentions that «Skruptudsen» was composed during his stay in Setúbal in the summer of 1866. shed by a plumbing system on farms» — explains the Danish short story writer who saw an ugly elf (Skruptudsen) one day, whose shrewd eyes, however, inspired the story that was later worked on in Denmark, receiving Danish nature as its environment. In the Complete Works of 1879 you can also read a small poem entitled «Em Setúbal» which was dedicated to Senhora O’Neill (translated into French in her album), written with deep compassion for the recent loss of her daughter».”