Ponte de Lima: from the old town over the bridge: a self-guided walk

By Alleytale

A town named for its bridge over the Lima

The town takes its name from the bridge over the Lima, so the walk goes from the river avenue through the old centre, with its churches, pillory, fountain and wall towers, and out across the bridge itself.

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The stops

1. 1Church of Nossa Senhora da Guia

   A hermitage of Saint Vincent the Martyr once stood near here, and when the river damaged it, a brotherhood of more than 300 clerics and merchants moved to higher ground in 1628, buying the stones of the ruined leper hospital to reuse. The new church was built in 1629 and 1630, and the porch and the chaplain's house were added in 1746. The nave is lined with polychrome carpet-pattern tiles.

   

2. 2Avenida dos Plátanos

   This riverside garden is a shaded avenue of plane trees about 440 metres long, with a view across the Lima to the far bank. The church of Nossa Senhora da Guia stands at its western end, and the former convent of Santo António and the Third Order of São Francisco, now the Museu dos Terceiros, sits at its centre, with a small trellised garden in front called the Jardim dos Simples.

   

3. 3Teatro Diogo Bernardes

   This Italianate theatre was designed by António Adelino de Magalhães Coutinho and inaugurated on 19 September 1896, on the site of a former convent, Santo António dos Frades Capuchos. Films were first shown here in 1920, and after years of neglect the municipal council acquired it in 1992. It stands along the Avenida dos Plátanos, near the Lima River, and later became the home of the Ponte de Lima Festival of Opera and Classical Music.

   

4. 4Igreja da Misericórdia de Ponte de Lima

   The Santa Casa da Misericórdia of Ponte de Lima was founded in 1530, and its church went up in the 17th century, with the main chapel and its stone coffered vault dating to 1638. When Rua Cardeal Saraiva was opened in the late 1920s it split the old hospital building in two, and the Baroque portico of the cloister was moved to face the new street. Two figures flank the main portal: a collector of alms with his bag, and a pilgrim.

   

5. 5Igreja Matriz de Ponte de Lima

   The original church here, from the 12th or 13th century, was small and Romanesque in feel, and in 1444 the Cortes of Évora recorded that the old church was too small. Renovations from 1567 gave the nave its three-part layout, and the building is described as fully Mannerist. Inside, a large altarpiece in the national style is dated 1729, and the neo-Gothic rose window was made in 1932, inspired by the one at São Francisco in Porto.

   

6. 6Pelourinho de Ponte de Lima

   The column in front of the town hall was built in 1936. When the old pillory was taken down in 1857 its parts were scattered: the shaft went to an inn by the river, the capital to the courtyard of an asylum, the shield to the bridge at Largo de São João, and the armillary sphere was lost. In 1836 a councillor had already torn off its chains and thrown them into the river.

   

7. 7Chafariz do Largo de Camões

   This Renaissance fountain was finished in 1603, paid for with a tax on certain consumer goods that was raised in 1578. It was first built in the square now called Largo Dr. António Magalhães and moved here to Largo de Camões in 1929. Look for the list of fines carved on it for anyone who fouled the water.

   

8. 8Torres de São Paulo e da Cadeia

   Of the oval medieval wall, which had nine towers and six gates, only the Porta Nova gate and two towers survive. The Torre da Cadeia Velha was built under King Manuel I to house the jail and was completed in 1511, and its south face carries the royal coat of arms and an armillary sphere. Beside it the 14th-century Torre de São Paulo has a Gothic inscription on its street side marking how high a flood once reached.

   

9. 9Ponte de Ponte de Lima

   Portuguese Wikipedia says the bridge goes back to the Roman invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, and was possibly built in the 1st century under Emperor Augustus. It adds that the bridge was rebuilt in the Middle Ages, possibly when the town received its charter from Countess Teresa in 1125. It has two distinct sections, a Roman one on the right bank and a medieval one, and it has been a National Monument since 1910.

   

10. 10Capela do Anjo da Guarda

    Also known as the Padrão de São Miguel, this little chapel stands by the river at the old bridge. It is an open square structure of granite ashlar under a ribbed cross vault, with pointed arches on three sides and an altar at the back holding an image of Saint Michael. It may descend from a late-Romanesque temple built at this river crossing at the end of the 13th century. Floods partly destroyed it and it was rebuilt in the 18th century. It has been a National Monument since 1978 and was restored in 2021 and 2022.

    

11. 11Igreja de Santo António da Torre Velha

    This church began as a small chapel documented since the 18th century and took its present form in an early 19th-century remodeling that made it larger. Until the mid-19th century it shared the site with a tower of the village's medieval walls, and the name Torre Velha, or Old Tower, comes from that tower, which was then demolished. The façade is covered in azulejos.

    

12. 12Museu do Brinquedo Português

    The Portuguese Toy Museum opened in June 2012 in the Casa do Arnado, on Largo da Alegria. It shows Portuguese toys in chronological order, up to 1986. The collection comes from Carlos Anjos, who has collected toys since 1980.

    

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