SINTRA · PENA PALACE · AUGUST
Pena Palace sits on a wooded ridge above Sintra, a short train ride west of Lisbon, and in August the sky over it is about as dry as Portugal gets. The 1991-2020 normals at the nearest official station record 0.20 inches of rain for the whole month and one day with a measurable fall. An outdoor day in the park can be planned three weeks out and it will hold.
What the month takes back is room. August is the peak of the European holiday calendar, and the palace is the first stop on nearly every Lisbon day trip. The compensation is light: 13 hours 43 minutes of it on August 15, with the sun still up at 8:32 p.m.
THE MONTH AT A GLANCE · PENA PALACE
August is the warmest and one of the driest months of the summer at the nearest station, with 84.2°F afternoons and light until 8:32 p.m., and it is also the busiest stretch of the European holiday calendar.
AVERAGE HIGH 84.2°F · ONE RAIN DAY · 13H43 OF DAYLIGHT ON AUGUST 15
Go for: a full outdoor day you can schedule in advance, the park and the ramparts in the same morning, and an evening on the ridge that lasts past eight.
Think twice before: booking August if lines bother you more than showers do: school holidays across Europe land on Sintra all at once.
Air normals: IPMA station 579, Lisboa Gago Coutinho, 1991-2020 · Daylight: sunrise-sunset.org · full sources at the end
On this page
- Pena Palace weather in August84.2°F days and 0.20 inches of rain
- How cold Sintra mornings getA 65.3°F low and an 18.9°F swing
- Crowds and ticket queues in the peak monthWhat we could verify, and what we could not
- Things to do at Pena Palace in AugustThe park, the Moorish Castle, Cabo da Roca
- A two-day Sintra itineraryGate at opening, coast at sunset
- August vs July and SeptemberHow the three months compare in figures
- Is August a good time to visit Pena Palace?Yes if your dates are locked
The ticket desk, the opening hours and the train from Rossio belong to the palace guide, and the town’s other houses to our Sintra page. The normals below come from one thermometer, and it is not on the ridge.
Pena Palace weather in August: average highs, lows and rain days
| August at Pena Palace | Normal, 1991-2020 |
|---|---|
| Average high | 84.2°F (29.0°C) |
| Average low | 65.3°F (18.5°C) |
| Day-to-night swing | 18.9°F |
| Monthly rainfall | 0.20 inches |
| Days with 0.04 in or more | 1.0 |
| Days with 0.39 in or more | 0.1 |
| Daylight, August 15 | 13 hours 43 minutes |
| Sunrise / sunset, August 15 | 6:49 a.m. / 8:32 p.m. local |
The nearest official thermometer is IPMA station 579 at Lisboa Gago Coutinho, the capital’s airport, and its 1991-2020 normals give August an average high of 84.2°F, an average low of 65.3°F and 0.20 inches of rain for the month. Two caveats travel with those figures. The station stands at 103.9 m, roughly 400 m below Pena and about 25 km east of it. The Sintra ridge makes its own cloud, so the palace runs colder, wetter and mistier than anything measured beside a runway.
One day in an average August records at least 1 mm of rain, which is 0.04 inch. That is the Portuguese service’s own threshold, not the 0.10-inch bar US tables use, so the counts do not swap with a NOAA table for an American city. In practice it means dry paths, warm stone and dust on your shoes for the whole visit, with mist rather than rain as the thing that takes the view off the terrace.
Between the 65.3°F night and the 84.2°F afternoon sits an 18.9°F swing, and it feels wider on the ridge, where the wood is shaded and the wind comes off the Atlantic. Pack a light layer for the 9 a.m. terrace and expect to carry it by noon. Sun protection does more work than a raincoat in this month, and our packing guide handles the rest of the bag.
August 15 brings 13 hours 43 minutes of daylight, the sun up at 6:49 a.m. and down at 8:32 p.m. local time. That is long enough to fit the palace, the Moorish Castle and a coast stop into one unhurried stretch, and it still leaves a final hour of light for a table in Sintra-Vila once the day trains have gone.
How warm is Pena Palace in August?
Take the two ends of the day first. The average high is 84.2°F, the average low 65.3°F, an 18.9°F gap inside twenty-four hours, and August is the warmest of the three summer months at this station, 1.3°F above July. Those readings come from the airport plain. Four hundred meters higher and a few miles closer to the ocean, Pena runs cooler, and the difference shows most in the first hour after the gates open.
Morning on the ridge asks for long sleeves or a light fleece, especially if you walk up from town instead of riding to the gate. By two in the afternoon the same clothes are dead weight and everyone on the terrace is in shorts. Water is the other thing to carry, since the route between palace and castle climbs in both directions.
Frost never enters an August conversation here: with a normal low of 65.3°F, the station publishes no cold-night count worth serving, and we found none for the ridge itself. We could also not verify a sea-surface temperature for the Sintra coast, so we give no water figure for Praia da Adraga or Guincho.
How busy is Pena Palace in August? Crowds, ticket prices and queue times
August sits at the top of the European holiday calendar, when Portuguese, Spanish and French schools are all out together and the Lisbon day-trip machine runs at full speed toward Sintra. It is also the driest of the three summer months at the station, 0.20 inches against September’s 1.41, so the weather hands nobody a reason to stay home. We found no monthly occupancy series and no room-rate series for Sintra, so we crown no month the year’s most expensive.
Fix the dates, then book the nights before anything else: Sintra’s small hotels fill early, and the fallback is a daily commute out of Lisbon. We could not verify Pena’s current ticket price, its August opening hours or the way its timed entry works, so we give no figure for any of the three. The operator publishes all of them. Our flights guide covers the transatlantic half of the same booking question.
On the lodging tax, we could not verify a rate for the municipality, so we give no percentage and no per-night amount. If one applies, it is settled at checkout rather than at the palace gate, and the rest of the budget is priced out in our Portugal cost guide.
The one place where paying more changes the month is the bed. A room in Sintra-Vila puts you at the gate in the first hour, before the Lisbon trains unload, and it leaves you in the town at 8 p.m. with the coaches gone. Sleeping in the capital instead costs you both ends of the day, the cool hour and the quiet one.
Things to do at Pena Palace in August: the park, the Moorish Castle and Cabo da Roca
Thirteen hours and forty-three minutes of daylight on August 15, and one rainy day in the entire month, mean a plan made for the outdoors can be kept. In February the same route would be a bet against the sky. August is the month for stacking the Park of Pena, a castle wall and an Atlantic clifftop into a single day, then eating dinner outside afterward.
Inside the grounds, the Park of Pena climbs to Cruz Alta and drops through the Valley of the Lakes to the Chalet of the Countess of Edla. The Castelo dos Mouros ramparts follow the same ridge, a walk rather than a drive from the palace gate. Down in town there is Quinta da Regaleira with its initiation well and tunnels, the Sintra National Palace with its twin chimneys, and Monserrate’s gardens. On the coast, Cabo da Roca and Praia da Adraga close the day. We verified no entry price for any of them.
What August changes is the air, not the stone. The ramparts hold heat and offer no shade, so they belong to the 10 a.m. slot, while the park’s wooded paths stay bearable at three. The distance between a 65.3°F morning and an 84.2°F afternoon is the whole argument for doing the exposed things first and the shaded things after lunch.
Free in August: the streets of Sintra-Vila, the clifftop at Cabo da Roca, and the sand at Praia da Adraga and Praia Grande. Whether any Sintra monument runs a free-entry day this month, we could not verify, so plan on paying at every gate.
Pena Palace in August: a two-day itinerary
Day one: breakfast in Sintra-Vila at eight, then be at the palace for opening while the terrace is still close to the night’s 65.3°F. Walk the park downhill to the Chalet of the Countess of Edla before eleven, then take the ridge across to the Castelo dos Mouros at 11:30, when the walls are hot but not yet punishing. Lunch in town at one, Quinta da Regaleira’s tunnels through the 3 p.m. peak near 84.2°F, then the road to Cabo da Roca for the 8:32 p.m. sunset.
Day two starts on the coast while the town fills: Praia da Adraga early, Monserrate’s gardens next, the Sintra National Palace and a slow afternoon to finish. If the ridge is under cloud, and mist forms there even in a month with 0.20 inches of rain, invert the order and give the morning to Regaleira’s tunnels and the palace kitchens, then climb once the cloud lifts. Rain is barely the risk: one day in an average August records 0.04 inch or more.
Pena Palace in August vs July and September
| Normal, 1991-2020 | July | August | September |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average high | 82.9°F | 84.2°F | 80.2°F |
| Average low | 64.4°F | 65.3°F | 63.3°F |
| Monthly rainfall | 0.11 in | 0.20 in | 1.41 in |
| Days with 0.04 in or more | 0.4 | 1.0 | 3.7 |
Across the three months the warmth barely moves and the rain moves a great deal. August’s 84.2°F average high runs 1.3°F above July and 4.0°F above September, and the nights keep the same order at 65.3°F, 64.4°F and 63.3°F. Rainfall is where they part company: 0.11 inches in July, 0.20 in August, then 1.41 in September, with wet days going from 0.4 to 1.0 to 3.7. We hold no sea-temperature series for any of the three, so the water stays out of this comparison.
Push the trip four weeks later and you trade four degrees of afternoon heat and a near-certain dry sky for 3.7 rainy days and a September that still tops 80°F. What you buy back is space, once European schools reopen and the coaches thin. Pull it four weeks earlier into July and the sky is drier still, 0.11 inches, with the crowds already at full summer strength, as the July page lays out.
Is August a good time to visit Pena Palace?
For anyone whose dates are locked to school holidays, August at Pena is a sound bet, and the figures back it: one rainy day in the month, 13 hours 43 minutes of daylight, and an average high of 84.2°F that the ridge itself trims. For anyone who minds a line more than a shower, this is the wrong month, and no amount of sunshine repairs that.
If the calendar bends, take September. The average high falls only 4.0°F to 80.2°F, nights sit at 63.3°F, and the bill is 3.7 rainy days instead of one, which buys lanes you can actually walk. Our timing guide runs the same test across all twelve months.
No other month pairs an 8:32 p.m. sunset with 0.20 inches of rain across thirty-one days, so the evening hour on the ridge can be put in the plan instead of hoped for.
The last word
Decide the bed first: a night in Sintra-Vila buys the gate at opening and the town after the coaches leave, and it is the one real lever August gives you. Then take the umbrella out of the bag. The normals count 0.1 days at 0.39 inch or more, a genuine soaking in roughly one August in ten, and the thing that will hide your view from the terrace is mist rather than rain.
Sources & data for this guide
- August, July and September air normals, 1991-2020 · IPMA, station 579 Lisboa Gago Coutinho, altitude 103.9 m · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Rain-day thresholds, 1 mm and 10 mm · IPMA climatological normals, not the 0.10-inch US threshold · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Daylight, sunrise and sunset for August 15, converted to local time · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Station caveat: the thermometer sits at Lisbon’s airport, about 25 km from Pena and roughly 400 m lower, so the ridge is colder, wetter and mistier than these normals suggest
- Ticket price, opening hours and timed-entry rules at Pena Palace: we could not verify current figures, so we give none · check the operator before you book
- Crowds and prices: we found no monthly occupancy or room-rate series for Sintra, and we could not confirm a municipal lodging-tax rate
- Place descriptions and the two-day sequence are editorial · hours and tickets change