Unesco-Portugal(1995,1996)

Six years after Mosteiro de Alcobaça, Portugal entered again in 1995 to world heritage list, this time with a place that is know has one of the most romantic places to go with your girlfried/boyfriend, also known for storys of witches and strange ceremonys in the sorroundings mountains, imortalised in many books but particularly in "Os Maias" by the portuguese writer Eça de Queirós, i am talking about the Cultural Landscape of Sintra.
Sintra is a nice village just a few km west of Lisbon and a obrigratory stop for who visits Lisbon. Sintra cultural landscape is a misture of monuments(palaces, convents, castels,etc,) with beautifull woods. Sintra is seen has one of the first places in Europe to start with the romantic architecture in the beggining of the XIX century. D. Fernando II transformed an old convent into a palace using a mixture of gotic, islamic and renaissance elements sorounded by exotic and local trees. Other followed and built using the same lines in the sorounding serra.

Just one year after Sintra, it was time reward the second biggest city in Portugal and one of the most proud of its origin:
Historic Centre of Porto- Porto only 300 km from Lisbon, the second biggest city in Portugal with their metropolitan area, also known has working capital of Portugal. The Porto city was built along the hillsides of the Douro river and has a beautifull landscape with 1000 year history. It was the romans that baptised city has Portus(the port). In this city you can see many and vaired monuments, including the stock exange, churchs, bridges, etc. This is also the city that gave the name to Porto wine even is not produced inside of the city, being only stored in the other side of the river.

Some interesting things that i heard about this two citys. Sintra was visited by lord byron and is told had writen some of his novels there. During the IIWW Sintra was a place where a lot of forenner diplomates were living and was a place full of German and English Spies.
Porto has a big number of english descendents, many of them associated with the porto wine culture has some of this big vinnyards belong to old english famillys.

This were very short introduction to this beatifull citys that show how much portuguese past is interesting. Here goes the links for more information and the origin of the photos.

http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/pt
http://www.ippar.pt/patrimonio/patrim_mundial.html
http://www.cm-porto.pt
http://www.cm-sintra.pt/

I leave in 11 days