Three places are called Monserrate. Only one of them is this one

The three, side by side

The one letter that tells them apart

Sintra and Bogotá both spell it Monserrate. Catalonia spells it Montserrat, with a t in the middle and no final e. That is the whole of the reliable difference in the names, and it is a single character, which is why a search engine happily hands you all three at once and why nobody should feel silly about landing in the wrong country.

Between Sintra and Bogotá the spelling does not help at all. There the tell is the word in front of it: Cerro means hill, and Bogotá’s is Cerro de Monserrate. If the page you are reading says Cerro, or says Colombia, you are not reading about Sintra.

The questions people arrive here with, answered

• “Is there a cable car to Monserrate?” Not in Sintra. There is no cable car, no funicular and no rack railway at the Monserrate this site covers. Inside the park you walk, or you pay the transfer supplement the operator offers between the main entrance and the palace. If you were asking about a cable car, you meant Bogotá or Catalonia.
• “How much does the Cerro de Monserrate cable car cost?” That is Bogotá. I have no source for its fares and I am not going to guess at them, so buy from whoever runs it rather than from a Portuguese palace guide. What I can tell you is that the twelve euros this site quotes has nothing to do with it.
• “How long is the cable car ride to Montserrat?” That is Catalonia. Same answer: not my mountain, and I hold no figure for it.
• “Is it safe to hike Monserrate, and which part of the city is safest?” Those are Bogotá questions, and they are good questions — asked of somebody in Bogotá. A garden guide in Sintra is not a source on personal safety in a city she does not live in, and an answer from me would be worth nothing to you.
• “Is Montserrat castle worth visiting?” Also not Sintra. What this site checked about Montserrat in Catalonia is that it is reached by a rack railway and by cable cars, and that is the whole of it. Everything else about it belongs to somebody who has actually been.

How to be sure you have found the Sintra one

Four things that are all true of this Monserrate and of neither of the others.

• It is a palace and a park, not a summit. The operator’s own navigation lists ten rooms in the building and thirteen points of interest in the grounds. The rooms, the park.
• It is on the EN375, the road between Sintra town centre and Colares, reached from Lisbon by way of the IC19. Getting here.
• You reach it by train and bus, not by wire. The operator names bus nº 1253 from Sintra train station, or nº 435 from the Lourel car park. The station is on the CP Sintra Line from Oriente, Rossio or Entrecampos.
• The ticket is twelve euros and covers the palace and the park together. The tickets page.

Why this page exists at all

Because a large part of the questions people type before they land here are about a cable car, a funicular, a fare and a hike, and none of those things is in Sintra. Somebody typing “monserrate cable car ticket price” is one click from planning around the wrong continent, and the kindest thing a page about the Portuguese one can do is say so early and clearly.

There is nothing careless about the mistake. Three real places carry nearly the same name; two of them are hills you ride up and one is a house in a garden; the names differ by a single letter in one case and by a word in the other. Anybody would mix them up. I have sent people to the wrong one of the two boarding points the operator names for its own buses, and that is with only one Monserrate to worry about.

If Sintra was the one you wanted

Then the ticket below is the one that gets you in. Twelve euros, the palace and the park, and the same price the operator charges at its own window.

Read next

• Visiting — hours, the scaffolding and the hill.
• Getting here from Sintra station.
• The park, point by point.
• Is it worth it?

Frequently asked questions