Guimarães: up to the castle hill: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
From the Campo da Feira up through the medieval streets to the castle that Guimarães calls the cradle of Portugal
You climb from the big square to the Largo da Oliveira, where a legend about an olive tree gave the church its name, then up the old Rua de Santa Maria to the hill where the castle stands, passing a house where a king was a guest, a ducal palace and a church tied by legend to the first king of Portugal.
The stops
The church stands at the end of Campo da Feira, and its curving front is covered in blue and white azulejos between two slim bell towers. Its body was completed and blessed in 1785, and for the apse the builders used stones from a demolished stretch of the medieval city walls. The Gualterianas procession begins and ends here.
Photo: Ray Swi-hymn from Sijhih-Taipei, Taiwan — CC BY-SA 2.0 Countess Mumadona Dias founded a monastery here around 949, and the church grew out of it. A legend says an olive tree brought from Jerusalem withered in this square and sprouted again three days after a cross was set beside it in 1342, which locals took as a miracle of Our Lady, hence the name. An olive tree has stood in the square again since its 1985 restoration.
Photo: António Amen — CC BY-SA 3.0 Look up: a passage over Rua de Santa Maria joins the two blocks of this house. In the late 15th century the nobleman Fernão de Sousa de Botelha lived here, and in 1502 King Manuel I was a guest in the house on his way back from Santiago de Compostela. In the 1830s the Swiss painter Auguste Roquemont directed major remodelling works.
Photo: Daniel VILLAFRUELA. — CC BY-SA 4.0 In 1653 Dr. Paulo de Mesquita Sobrinho founded the chapel of Our Lady of Mercy here, together with a retreat for eight nuns in the habit of the Trinitarians, and gave it 2,500 cruzados. The plain granite front on Rua das Trinas hides a chapel with a wooden barrel vault and a neoclassical altarpiece. Inside the entrance hall is an old foundling wheel, and the garden behind keeps the old wheel for drawing water from the well.
Photo: Stephen Colebourne from London, UK — CC BY 2.0 This granite monument with a bronze bust honours the archaeologist Francisco Martins Sarmento, who began digging at the Citânia de Briteiros in 1874. The words Citânia and Sabroso on the wall name two of the hill-fort sites he explored, and the relief blocks use hill-fort motifs. The people of Guimarães dedicated it to him in 1933, with an inscription calling him the glorious unearther of remote antiquities of the homeland.
Photo: Joseolgon — CC BY-SA 4.0 The first stone of this Carmelite nuns' church and convent was laid on 26 March 1685, and the first mass was said on 8 April 1687. Inside are gilded Baroque altarpieces and a pipe organ. After the last nun died in 1854, a royal decree of 1860 gave the convent to a children's asylum, and the main portal still reads Lar de Santa Estefania, 1863.
Photo: Marmontel — CC BY 2.0 This noble Baroque house stands on Carmo Square, which Rua de Santa Maria links to the Oliveira and Santiago squares. It belonged to the Counts of Margaride and served as the royal residence for kings visiting the city during the late monarchy. The family called it Guimarães' viewing room, where kings, princes, Church dignitaries and ministers were received.
Photo: Vanbasten 23 — CC BY-SA 3.0 In 1882 a group of patriots living in Rio de Janeiro proposed a monument to Afonso Henriques. Soares dos Reis made the bronze statue in 1887, cast at the Massarelos foundry in Porto, and King Luís attended its unveiling on 20 September 1887. It stood in Largo de São Francisco, then in the Toural from 1911, and since 1940 it has faced the main entrance of the Palace of the Dukes of Braganza.
Photo: Gianluca Campanella — CC BY 2.0 Afonso, Count of Barcelos, an illegitimate son of King John I, ordered this palace built in the first quarter of the 15th century, around a central rectangular courtyard. Look up at the six tall chimneys. It fell into ruin, was used as barracks from 1807, and was radically restored from 1937 before opening to the public on 24 June 1959. Part of it is now a museum.
Photo: Panegyrics of Granovetter from Toronto, Ontario, Canada — CC BY-SA 4.0 This little chapel was built in 1639 on the slope east of the Palace of the Dukes, with a porch on columns and a granite pulpit on its front, which the heritage inventory calls a curious rural ensemble. The cross in front of the door dates from 1640, and the inventory records the words O Cónego Arrochela o pôs, meaning Canon Arrochela put it here. Inside, the nave is lined with 18th-century tiles.
Photo: Vitor Oliveira from Torres Vedras, PORTUGAL — CC BY-SA 2.0 Legend suggests this small Romanesque church was where the young Afonso Henriques was baptized, though the claims about it are contradictory. It was first mentioned in 1216 and consecrated around 1239. Inside, many of the granite floor slabs are carved as tombs bearing the names of knights who fell in the line of duty.
Photo: Krzysztof Golik — CC BY-SA 4.0 Mumadona Dias had a castle built on this hill in the 10th century, and tradition says Portugal's first king, Afonso Henriques, was born here. It is popularly called the cradle of the nation. The walls form a shield-like outline around eight rectangular towers and a central keep, and the castle was restored from 1937 and reinaugurated on 4 June 1940.
Photo: Krzysztof Golik — CC BY-SA 4.0
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