Monserrate Palace stands in Sintra, Portugal. The English merchant Francis Cook subleased the estate in 1856 and bought it in 1863, and he later became Viscount of Monserrate. The architect James Thomas Knowles worked with him from 1863. Cook reworked the remains of a neo-Gothic house that Gerard de Visme had built over chapel ruins in 1789.
The article describes the style as eclectic, influenced by Romanticism, Mudéjar and Moorish Revival, and neo-Gothic elements. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake had made the earlier farmhouse unlivable, and Lord Byron visited the ruined property in 1809.
The Portuguese state acquired the property in 1949, and it was classified as a building of public interest in 1978. Sintra Park took over management in 2000, and the palace reopened to the public.
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