About the house, and the family that keeps it

The house

Casa da Paderna is a chalet built in the 1800s on the slope below Sintra Old Town, ten minutes on foot from Palace Square. Three floors step down the hillside with patios, terraces and gardens between them, and a studio of its own stands apart in the garden. Every room faces the Arraçário Valley; the blue-and-white azulejo panel beside the front door has carried the name of the house for a century. Inside there are chandeliers, a working fireplace, a wall of books, a dining table that seats twelve and a kitchen whose 19th-century tiles are the originals.

The family

We are the family who has kept the house and let it to guests since 1996. We hand over the keys ourselves, in person, every time; on weekday mornings our housekeeper is on the property as well, in her own part of it, for the laundry and anything else that comes up. We answer our own email and our own telephone — there is no agency, no enquiry portal and no sales team between you and us. We speak English and Portuguese. The company behind the house is Casa da Paderna, Lda, registered in Sintra, NIF 517218933. The rooms are still known by the colours the family has always called them, and we have kept every guest book since the first year: a shelf of them, handwritten, on the table in the hall.

How the house is let

Whole, to one group at a time. You take the house, the gardens, the patios, the terraces and the garden studio, and the property is yours for as long as you are here. Six bedrooms with five bathrooms sleep fourteen guests, plus three babies or small children. It is self-catering, with a kitchen on every floor and another in the studio. Dogs are welcome. There is free parking along the lane and gigabit wifi in the house. Availability and nightly bookings run through our calendar on Beds24; book six months or more ahead and you save ten per cent, and on a seven-night stay the eighth night is free.

Weddings and celebrations

Most of the year this is a family house for reunions and holidays. It is also an intimate wedding venue: the garden takes thirty-five people in total, the fourteen sleeping in the house counted among them, for elopements, micro-weddings, anniversaries, workshops and retreats. Every wedding is catered and quoted as a package — write with your dates and what you have in mind and we will send a price. Couples travel in from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and across Europe; the weddings page has the details, the seasons and the questions couples ask.

Where we are

Rua da Paderna, 4, 2710-604 Sintra, Portugal — below the historic centre, on the slope into the valley. Lisbon Airport is about forty minutes by car, and the train from Rossio station in central Lisbon takes about the same. Getting here has the routes, the parking and what is on the doorstep.

This website

The site is ours, written in our own words. Wedding photographs are by Chas Studios. What the site does with your information — which is as close to nothing as we can manage — is on the privacy page. To reach us, see contact.