Sintra, Apparitions and Stories From the Mountains - Private Night Walk

Early in the night we will meet at Sintra's Historic Centre, where this unique opportunity of hearing the true background of mysticism involving Sintra begins, through the words of Miguel Boim, Sintra's foremost history researcher, with the additional advantage of visiting a tourist spot like Sintra away from the usual crowds.

After being introduced to what legends and myths are and their impact in the village through time, we'll begin our way across the mountain (by road and having very short trails) in the dark of the night.

With the stars hanging above us, the nocturnal landscape will be broken by the sight of a few monuments in the distance (National Palace, Pena Palace, among others), as well as some peculiar sites whose past specifics, and what they enclose, would elude a regular guide. Also, you will know how these impacted the traditions and way of thinking of the local people - especially the ancient ones.

From the highest parts of the mountain, whose silence a tourist will find uncommon, you'll hear about some of the strange memoirs that history left us in the documents and manuscripts from past centuries.

The walk (about 6 kilometers, spanning around 4 hours) has the singularity of being titled "Apparitions and Stories From the Mountains".

The terrain is a regular one (often times through dark roads) and the effort implied is very similar to spending a whole afternoon strolling around Sintra, with its ups and downs.

And the questions will emerge to you: why are some things like they are here in Sintra? Their disposition, their asymmetry? How have they come to be like this? And why? And which explanations most people come up with? Easy things and quick conclusions are bad advisers, and only looking through the lens of the past, with the proper context of the Portuguese medieval society, can we get closer to a real life lived in the past.

In that past, what was already abandoned, causing then fear to visit? Not many centuries ago, you would have travelled in a carriage from Lisbon through a very hard, harsh and narrow road, desert-like, with mountains and windmills in the distance, and your coachman would stop midway, after almost two hours of driving. What for? You will know. A tradition that settled in the 1970's and 1980's in Portugal, but in a context whose origin is unfathomable. However, as soon as one arrived at the Village, you would notice an important building, abandoned, visited by none. This is just an image of a past gateway to Sintra, though there are thousands of them when you look to the past with the proper historical filter acquired in endless pages of memories, documentation and descriptions from the past.

The walk will end where it starts, in Sintra's Historic Centre.