Quinta da Regaleira

Listen for the water first. Somewhere below the ferns there is a steady trickle. It runs over moss, drips from stone and fills small hidden pools. The air here is cool and damp, even on a bright day. It smells of wet earth, old leaves and lichen. Above you, the trees of the Sintra hills close in like a green roof. Welcome to Quinta da Regaleira, a garden designed to be read as much as walked.

The word quinta means a country estate in Portuguese. This one takes its name from an earlier owner, a baroness known as the Baroness of Regaleira. The estate you see today, though, is the work of one man with an enormous fortune and a very particular imagination. His name was António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro. He made his money in Brazil, and in Lisbon people gave him a nickname — Monteiro of the Millions.

Monteiro was not only rich. He was a serious collector and a deeply learned man. He gathered books, scientific instruments and objects linked to mythology, religion and the poetry of Luís de Camões, Portugal's great national poet. When he bought this hillside at the end of the nineteenth century, he did not want a simple summer house. He wanted a place that would carry his ideas in stone, water and planting.

To build it, he hired an Italian architect named Luigi Manini. Here is the first surprise. Manini was famous above all as a set designer for the theatre and opera stage in Lisbon. That background explains a great deal. This garden works like a stage. Paths turn suddenly. Views open and close. Doorways lead into darkness, and darkness leads back into light. Almost every corner is a carefully planned scene.

The main work took place in the first years of the twentieth century. Turn toward the palace and look at its surface. The style is Manueline revival. Manueline is a Portuguese late Gothic style from the age of the great sea voyages, full of twisted ropes, shells, coral and sea plants carved in stone. Here it returns, centuries later, mixed with Gothic and Renaissance details. The tower rises with pinnacles and gargoyles, and the stone carving is extremely fine.

Near the palace stands the small Chapel of the Holy Trinity. From outside it looks compact and almost delicate. Look closely at the facade and you will find saints, symbols of faith and finely cut ornament. Many visitors walk past without realising that the chapel also has a lower level. Below it, a hidden crypt connects to the network of tunnels that runs beneath the estate. Even the place of prayer has a secret way out.

Now the gardens begin to climb. They are not laid out in neat flat lines like a French formal garden. Instead they follow the steep slope of the hill, layer above layer. Stone benches, small towers, statues of gods from classical mythology and narrow stairways appear among the trees. Many people read the whole garden as a journey, from the lower, shadowed areas toward the light at the top. That reading is an interpretation, but the design certainly invites it.

And then you reach the place most visitors come for — the Initiation Well. It is not a well for water. It is a deep shaft lined with a spiral stone staircase that winds down into the earth, roughly 27 metres deep. The stairs pass a series of landings as they descend. Many writers link these landings to the nine circles of Hell in Dante's Divine Comedy, or to the stages of a ritual initiation. Monteiro left no simple explanation, so treat these ideas as theories, not facts.

At the bottom of the well, look down at the floor. A compass rose is set into the stone, combined with a cross. Some people connect this cross to the Knights Templar, the medieval military order, and others connect the whole site to Freemasonry or to Rosicrucian mysticism, a tradition of spiritual and esoteric study. These connections are popular and widely repeated. They are possible, but they remain interpretations. What is certain is the feeling at the base — cold air, a circle of daylight far above, and the sound of footsteps spiralling down.

From the bottom, dark tunnels lead away through the rock. This is the second surprise. You do not have to climb back up the same stairs. One tunnel brings you out near a lake, where flat stepping stones cross the water below a small waterfall. The move from darkness to sudden green light is very deliberate. Again, this is the set designer at work. He is controlling exactly what you see, and exactly when you see it.

There is also a second, smaller well on the estate, often called the Unfinished Well. Its stairs drop straight down rather than in a long spiral, and it feels rougher and simpler. Some visitors find it more atmospheric because fewer people stop there. The grottoes around the lake have their own character too. Water drips from the ceilings, and the stone is shaped to look natural, although human hands built much of it.

After Monteiro's time, the estate passed through several private owners. In the late 1990s the town of Sintra took ownership, and the gardens and palace later opened to the public. Regaleira is also part of the wider Cultural Landscape of Sintra, which UNESCO listed as World Heritage in 1995. That listing covers the palaces, parks and forests of these hills together. The idea is simple. Here, buildings and nature were planned as one landscape.

It helps to know where you are in that landscape. Sintra sits on hills that catch moisture from the Atlantic, so mist often rolls through the trees. That is why the garden is so green, and why the stone steps can be slippery. From the higher terraces, on a clear day, you can see across toward other parts of the Sintra hills. The town's historic centre is only a short walk away, down a winding road lined with old walls and villas.

Before you leave, stop for a moment. Listen again for the water you heard at the start. Look at the moss on the nearest wall, the shine of damp stone, the light falling through the leaves. Monteiro built this place to make visitors think about mystery, faith and the search for knowledge. Whatever you believe about its symbols, you have walked down into the earth and come back up into the light. Take that small journey with you as you walk out through the gate.